JVC Everio GZ-MS100 review – affordable price, average quality

Thumbs Up:

Manual controls for all settings; comfortable and small design; and average standard-def video quality.

Thumbs Down:

The menu navigation is tricky and the camcorder has polarizing interface. The user guide is meager.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 is a 6.8-megapixels camcorder that has 1/6″ CCD optical sensor. The camcorder offers 800x digital zoom, widescreen capture and Electronic Image Stabilizer. The GZ-MS100 has a SD card slot to support SD/SDHC cards up to 16GB. The maximum shutter speed is 1/4000 second and minimum is 1/2 second. The shooting mode is Digital Photo Mode and shooting programs are Twilight mode, Portrait mode, Sports mode, Night mode, Spotlight and Snow.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has 2.7-inch LCD display based on TFT active matrix that works as a rotating viewfinder of 112,000 pixels resolution. There is an inbuilt stereo microphone based on Electret Condenser technology. The mic has a feature of wind-noise reduction.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has zoom type lens manufactured by Konic Minolta. The lens has a focal length of 2.2-77mm with an aperture of F/1.8-4 that provides optical zoom up to 35x. Auto-focus is TTL contrast detection. The Everio GZ-MS100 has inbuilt lens shield and filter size of 30.5mm for the lens. Focus adjustment is manual and automatic, and zoom adjustment is motorized drive.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has three types of white-balance including Automatic, Presets and Custom. The white-balance presets are Halogen, Cloudy and Fine. The exposure metering are Spot and Matrix. In addition, the exposure modes are Program and Automatic. Special effects are Classic Film, Monotone, Strobe and Sepia. Digital video format is MPEG2 and still image format is JPEG. The image storage resolution option is JPEG 640×480.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has self-timer delay function of 2 seconds and 10 seconds. The camcorder also has Low Lux/Night Mode and inbuilt LED light. Additional features are Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording, Digital noise recording, Backlight compensation, USB2.0 compatibility, YouTube capture mode, PRINT Image Matching, PictBrider Support, inbuilt speaker, Auto power save and DPOF support.

There are three interfaces in JVC Everio GZ-MS100 including 1×DC power input, 1×composite video/audio output and 1×USB. The camcorder has JVC BN-VF808U lithium ion rechargeable battery. Operating system required for the installation are Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista. The accessories supplied inside the package are product manual, A/V cable, USB cable, software and driver discs, power adapter and battery.

Razzle Dazzle:

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 is 2.7 inches high, 2.2 inches wide and 4.4 inches deep and weighs around 9.6 ounces. Its horizontal body looks small, but the camcorder has size and shape like deck of cards. As soon as you flip-open the display, the camcorder looks big in size and slightly heavy to handle. The camcorder’s body is made of plastic, but it feels good while taking in hand.

Inside Dope:

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 is compact size and SD card based camcorder. It features one-touch button to upload the videos to internet. The YouTube branding on the back of LCD display and on the box attracts YouTube-savvy. JVC has introduced its new Laser Touch Interface to the Everio GZ-MS100, which is a plus point. JVC had manufactured this model to fit CMOS sensor of 680,000 pixels resolution and 35x optical zoom lens in a compact body. You will not find high-resolution sensor and better optical zoom on other models from its competitors. However, this great feature comes with an expensive price tag. In addition to this, JVC Everio GZ-MS100 does not provide good quality and performance. Therefore, you can check what other competitors are providing in their camcorders before making a final decision about new JVC model. We also recommend you to check Canon FS100 also as it has better features.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has 2.7-inch rotating LCD display. You can flip open the display to access Laser Touch control strip. You can swipe your finger on this strip to navigate through the menus. The strip is touch-sensitive and quick responsive. While using it, the strip highlights with shining blue color. You can use this strip to scroll up and down, to adjust the focus, exposure and shutter speed in Manual mode.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 is comfortable and easy to use device. The battery is located at the back of the Everio GZ-MS100 and takes a lot of space. A zoom rocker and snapshot button sits on the top. A switch to change from shooting video to capture still photo is located on the left side of the body. You cannot take still photographs while shooting a video. The button to flip between record and play sits above the switch. Moreover, a button to change mode out of Auto to Manual is located beneath the switch. There is a one-touch Upload button and Direct DVD button. This Upload button will connect, trans-code and upload the videos through Cyberlink software in Windows only. This feature is also available in the competitors of the GZ-MS100 and most of them have inbuilt software inside the camcorder for the same which do not require any installation.

Five Laser Touch buttons: OK/display, three context-sensitive buttons and Menu are located beneath the display. After some practice, you will remember the positions of the controls.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has a plus point of Manual mode that allows adjusting every setting such as scene modes between Night, Spotlight, Snow and Sports. The camcorder records video of MPEG2 format to SDHC/SD cards. Ultra Fine setting works at 8.5Mbps that takes 15 minutes at 1GB storage media. There are another three options and the last in the row is Eco at 1.5Mbps that records up to 20 hours recording time at 16GB SDHC/SD card.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 will produce satisfactory video quality while shooting outdoors in daylight. We also recorded some videos both in outdoors and indoors. It showed some artifacts and noise on viewing Full Screen, but the video quality looked better in YouTube proportions. The colors were fine with passable white-balance in natural light. The indoor video quality was not good. The GZ-MS100 does not have any option to change the fluorescent or incandescent white-balance presets. You can use the manual white balance for better results. Also, there is a halogen setting to correct the light from weak inbuilt LED located at the front-side of the Everio GZ-MS100.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 has no optical image stabilization, so the picture/video will be shaky on extending out the lens up to 10x or 35x without any tripod mount. In addition, the zoom rocker is very touchy, so you have to do some practice to control it unless it will not zoom accurately as per requirement. The Everio GZ-MS100 has a wind-cut filter located under the lens, which you can turn on/off for stereo mic. During test, this wind-cut filter also proved to be useless.

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 should be satisfactory for budget-conscious users who want to record videos for the Web and internet from simple, small and SD card based camcorder. However, the Everio GZ-MS100 will not be good for playing recorded video on TV or computer in full screen.

Nitty Gritty:

JVC Everio GZ-MS100 is average budget SD card based camcorder that is attractive in small design. The video quality is average and one-touch upload is available for YouTube users. But we would recommend you to check out what other manufacturers are offering before you buy this device.