JVC Everio HD Camcorder Review / Giveaway

It’s December, and do I have some Happy Holidays for my readers!  EVERY WEEKDAY from now until Christmas Eve I will be featuring a product AND a giveaway!  All of these products would also make excellent gifts for any member of your family (both the tech savvy and non, since I like to speak to the non-techs among you most often)  Most of the items will be sponsored by a company, but some will be sponsored by me!  I will always let you know which is which.  I never, EVER recommend a product that I don’t believe in.  I have turned down several review opportunities because they either conflict with brands I already believe in, or I don’t believe in the product at all.  All of the giveaways will be open until the 24th of December where I will select the winners!  (Although one of the giveaways will NOT be hosted on my site, but I’ll definitely let you know how to enter.)  So whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Festivus, or you just like free stuff, you are going to love me this holiday season!

First up is the JVC Everio!  The funny thing about this particular product is that I had been trying to win one since about July of this year.  I’ve wanted it so that my vlogs would look much better.  I typically use the built in webcam on my laptop, and wanted to be able to move around and do more with my vlogs, especially for my Organized Mom website, where my videos are more of me cleaning the house.  I was finally able to meet the JVC reps at BlogHer, and was able to get this product to review and one to give away!  This summer JVC did a fantastic campaign with a giveaway every single day on their facebook page.  Make sure you “like” them to be aware of all the great giveaways they do.

When the camera arrived, I immediately wanted to try it out to see if it would take better quality videos than my point and shoot digital camera.  This is a video taken with the JVC Everio of my daughter showing off one of her ornaments.  This is in low light conditions.

I was definitely impressed with the quality.  It has facial recognition built into the camera so a persons face is almost always in focus.  You can turn this off if you are filming other items.  It also has an image stabilizer, which is definitely helpful for shaky hands.  I found the absolute best picture quality though is when you aren’t holding the camera at all, and it is resting on a stable surface.  For shots with the family of various items, though, the image stabilizer will do the trick.

Another feature I was impressed to see was the time lapse recording.  I have ALWAYS wanted to try this, and totally missed my opportunity to really show it off when we had a major snow storm the other day.  It would have been great to capture from grass to covered in white fluffy snow.  I will likely do this next time it snows, and will be sure to post the results.  The particular model I have has 8 GB of internal memory.  It also has an SD card slot to increase your memory capacity.

Uploading the videos to my computer was a snap too.  The Everio MediaBrowser software it really fun and simple to use.  It has a calendar view with thumbnails on each date so you can easily find exactly the video you are looking for.  The software also has simple editing tools so you can easily cut off the part of your video when you walk back over to turn it off.  It also has an upload button on the camera for easy uploading to YouTube so you can share your videos with your friends.

The camera is super small, and is only about double the thickness of my point and shoot, but about the same size height and width.  This makes the camera ultra portable, and easily accessible when those video moments just happen to pop up.  There is also a snapshot button right next to the zoom buttons to not only capture the video, but to easily capture stills without having to find your regular camera too.  I will say though, that the stills on my camera did turn out better than the ones on the JVC Everio, but not by a ton.  I was still happy with the photos.

It’s definitely a fun camcorder to have, and I can’t wait to take it on our upcoming trips, especially when we take the kids to Sea World and Disneyland in 2011!  When my daughter and I went last year, we only had my point and shoot (and sometimes just my phone), so this will help us capture the moments in High Definition (which is really the only way to experience life)

To enter to win the JVC Everio simply leave a comment on this post.  As always, only one entry is allowed per person.  Thank you!

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I receive compensation if you make a purchase using the links.

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