Zoom Q3HD with 1x Optical Zoom 2.4 LCD Screen, Gray

Most helpful customer reviews

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful.
Great Audio; Fair Video
By J. Weber
(See addendum at the bottom for update)

The video sensor size of this unit is 1/3.2 inch. This is a miniscule sensor that can not possibly deliver high quality HD video.

To put it another way, if Blu-Ray video quality is a "10", an $800 HD camcorder is a "7", a cellphone is a "2" and this unit is about a "4" in video quality.

To put it yet another way, if you watch video from this unit on a computer and set the viewer to half size, the video looks great--sharp and detailed. Increasing the size to 100% doesn't seem to add much. Most of the quality issues are loss of detail, especially noticable in faces. Like all sensors, in bright light, quality is much better than dim.

Audio is top notch. The stereo separation is perfect--not too wide or narrow. The unit has pretty flat EQ in recording audio--just slightly hot on the treble end giving a bit of brightness, but this is mild. It can record 24 bit audio, which is very useful for live recording as it preserves audio detail even if the sound gets quiet.

It also has an interesting feature where it can be set to automatically turn down the gain if there's any clipping, but it is one way only--it won't turn the gain back up again. So you aren't getting artificial "automatic gain control" type changing of the gain, yet you avoid clipping. There is also the standard automatic gain control (constantly adjusting input gain to the volume level) which is useful for recording voice, interviews, classroom lectures, etc. Manual gain control is limited to either "high input" or "low input"--there is no input level control. Bottom line: the audio recording is a huge success, with very high quality stereo reproduction.

Battery life is about 2 hours of continuous recording, with the display on. Unfortunately there is no way to turn off the display, so it just stays on and uses up battery power. Hopefully this can be fixed in a firmware update.

So we end up with great audio, and fair video. For my application--recording my band's gigs, this is all I need to see how we look live, and to hear excellent and detailed audio. There aren't any other alternative products for great audio + video in this price range. You just have to realize that you get what you pay for in video quality.


TIPS AND TRICKS:
1) My unit was randomly stopping recordings until I updated the firmware, so suggest doing that off the Zoom website.

2) 1080p recording is noticeably better than 720p on this unit, so would definitely record at 1080p.

3) Be sure to set the battery type correctly to either alkaline or rechargeable, or the unit can shut off prematurely thinking the batteries are dead.

4) It's almost impossible not to get fingerprints on the lens--be sure to clean it just before you start recording. There's an excellent product called LensPen which is quick and very effective.

5) The "glass" on the user screen display on the back side is actually soft plastic and it scratches very easily.

6) The "concert lighting" setting desaturates the colors, while the "dark" setting pumps up the video gain.

A quick tip about the HandyShare software that comes with it. It is not a video editing suite by any means and is actually quite primitive. But it does a few things very well--you can trim video clips and it doesn't re-encode them, so it retains the original video and audio quality. It can save the audio separately. It can also normalize audio (adjust it to full volume) without re-encoding the video. It does not join video segments, however.

OVERALL: Perfect for applications where audio quality is a higher priority than video quality. There aren't any other units currently in this price range out there which can do that. If you want pristine audio AND video, you'll need to spend much more, investing in a top quality camcorder with external microphones.

ADDENDUM: After a while I noticed a problem: with long recordings, the unit randomly stops recording. I tried multiple memory cards (including up to Class 10), new batteries, tried all settings. Not better with the latest Firmware 1.15. Finally I returned the unit for a replacement. The replacement unit had the same problem! I use this to record my band so need it to record at least 45 minutes. I would find the unit had often (but not always) turned itself off somewhere in the 45 minute set, so I'd keep losing the rest. Sadly, I have returned the 2nd replacement unit, and am now looking for another option. Hopefully a future firmware update can fix this. Until then, I have lowered my rating to 1 star.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Perfect for bands who want to record their live shows.
By Dennisnashville
Ok, first you have to know why this 'camcorder' was created. Samson (Zoom) specializes in equipment for musicians. The Q3hd started life as a field recorder. Thus the stereo mics placed in x/y positions. The audio quality was superb for recording dynamic sound like a live performance. Then they added a video recorder. The video wasn't that good, so they upgraded the video to HD. Now, it's perfect. If you set the video to 1080p and the audio to 48kHz/320kbps, turn on the 'concert lighting' feature, you will be blown away by the result! Most camcorders crap out on flashy lights and loud punchy sound. Not this puppy. It is what it was designed to do. It listens to the sound and automatically sets it's record levels to the loudest sound it hears, so you never distort the audio. The bass is low and punchy, the mids are clean, and the highs are crisp and clear. We use it to record all our shows. And we LOVE it.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Nothing Else Out There Like It
By Working Musician
It works exactly as advertised. The sound quality is uncompromising and the video is not bad if you are willing to take a few simple steps.
In natural light, the video is as good as any camera below the $600 range. By using the correct camera setting with the correct lighting, even the night videos come out fine.
For critics who claim the editing software is not good, I say they are either too lazy to read or they are possibly learning disabled. It is simple and effective for cutting your videos to length. It is excellent for normalizing the sound to broadcast levels, widening or tightening stereo fields and adding any needed effects.
The files are excellent quality .mov files (Quicktime) but there are any number of freeware programs out there to change it to a poor quality .avi or .mpeg file if that is what you want.