JVC Everio GZ-MG360 – Capable to record large length videos
Thumbs Up:
Capable to hold several hours of video; compact design and good price.
Thumbs Down:
Visible compressed video artifacts; no headphone jack, mic input and eye-level viewfinder.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
JVC Everio GZ-MG360 camcorder has 1/6” CCD optical sensor. It features 800x digital zoom, Electronic Image Stabilizer and digital photo shooting mode. The maximum shutter speed is 1/4000 second and minimum is 1/2 second. It has 60GB inbuilt hard drive and micro-SD card slot.
2.7-inch LCD display of JVC Everio GZ-MG360 has a resolution of 112,000 pixels. It also works as rotating viewfinder. The additional features are Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording, USB 2.0 compatibility, PictBridge support, inbuilt speaker, Direct Print, DPOF support and inbuilt lighting.
The still image format of JVC Everio GZ-MG360 is JPEG and image storage resolution is 640×480. Analog video format is NTSC and digital video format is MPEG2.
Zoom lens is manufactured by Konica Minolta and has focal length of 2.2-77 mm with an aperture of F/1.8-4. It provides 35x optical zoom. Zoom adjustment is motorized drive and focus adjustment is automatic and manual. JVC Everio GZ-MG360 has 30.5mm filter and inbuilt lens shield and inbuilt stereo microphone.
JVC Everio GZ-MG360 has three connectors: 1×DC power input, 1×composite video/audio input/output and 1×USB. It has one JVC BN-VF808U lithium ion rechargeable battery. Accessories supplied inside the package are software and driver disc, audio/video cable, USB cable, power adapter, battery, shoulder strap and infrared remote control.
Razzle Dazzle:
Like complete MG300 series, JVC Everio GZ-MG360 is 2.2 inches tall, 4.5 inches wide and 2.2 inches deep and it weighs around 12.7 ounces with battery. The enclosure color is onyx black.
Inside Dope:
The hard-disk based standard definition camcorders are alluring when they fall in low price range. Same is true for JVC Everio G series, which costs from $350 to $450. Now, the company has launched JVC Everio GZ-MG360 that offers 60GB hard drive, and the MG330 with 30GB hard drive. The MG330 comes in red, blue and silver colors, whereas the MG360 comes only in black color. Both of the models offer onboard Share Station dock to provide FireWire and S-video ports.
JVC Everio GZ-MG360 has 2.7-inch LCD display. The GZ-MG360 has vertical touch-sensitive blue-light LED strip located at the left side of LCD screen. It allows navigating through menu options. You will find all the required options such as backlight compensation, scene exposure modes, aspect ratio, gain control and video quality located at the top level. Other manual options include metering options, shutter speed, white balance, manual focus and exposure compensation.
JVC Everio GZ-MG360 has 1/6 inch optical sensor of 680,000 pixels and 35x optical zoom. On the dark side, there is no viewfinder included in the camcorder. The MG360 can record MPEG2 video in four different qualities including Economy (352×240 pixels at 1.5Mbps), Normal at 4.2Mbps, Fine at 5.5Mbps and Ultra Fine at 8.5Mbps. The recording time will increase, but quality degrades on decreasing the bit rate. For the MG360, the recording time will be 14 hours in Ultra Fine mode and 74 hours in Economy mode. It will be 7 hours and 37 hours respectively for 30GB models. We disappointed that the included CyberLink software is only compatible to Windows. However, you can simply drag and drop your videos and photographs files to your Mac machine.
We also missed eye-level viewfinder in JVC Everio GZ-MG360. However, it is common for the camcorders in its size. The LCD looks washed out in bright light and it is difficult to view in low light. We would prefer to have alternative backup viewfinder. The camcorder also does not have external headphone and microphone jacks.
The optical zoom seems to be smooth. The auto focus works well in bright light and even focus closely for 1 inch distant object. However, it took a long time for focus in low light and low contrast light. The Digital Image Stabilization is also less effective than optical one.
The color reproduces good and accurately for displaying bright colored subjects and subtle tones. There are visible compressed artifacts in the videos like various standard-def camcorders. They will be more noticeable while comparing the moving objects to background. On the bright side, the moving objects will be recorded very well at high quality settings. However, the backgrounds will appear to have low resolution and blocky. These artifacts were noticeable on wider LCD and less on small screen. The photographs of VGA resolution are enough good for online sharing and email.
Nitty Gritty:
JVC Everio GZ-MG360, MG360, MG335 and MG330 are useful and budget priced camcorders for new users. These models are cheaper than Sony DCR-SR65 and SR45, and Panasonic SDR-H60 and H40. If you need more space and capacity to record long hour videos, then you can buy JVC Everio GZ-MG360.
