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1. 

   Pasadena
   May 20th, 2010 - 22:41

   This looked like a great little pocket camcorder until I tried to hook it up to my Mac. The quickstart guide says for Mac use install the software from the CD. However, the CD is Windows only. I called Polaroid tech support–they confirmed it is NOT Mac compatible. They told me to copy the files over using a card reader. The problem is I can transfer the files to the Mac, but the Mac does not know how to handle them. I’m sure there is a work around, but a cheap little camera that is advertised as Mac compatible SHOULD NOT require extensive work arounds.
   Rating: 1 / 5
2. 

   W. Nagel
   May 20th, 2010 - 23:54

   HD-1080 + OPTICAL Zoom. Compact in size and features (not too much, not too little – both are undesirable). Worked fine with PC. Simple switch for HD versus smaller (Web) file size. Audio was solid. Low light could have been better (but I really taxed it). Install CD wasn’t readable on one PC, but switched to another and copied CD to a thumb drive. Need their viewer for .avi codec. Good resolution for still photos. Great videos/pics of Amsterdam!
   Rating: 4 / 5
3. 

   Victor Lee
   May 21st, 2010 - 00:30

   I bought this camcorder mainly because it was the lowest-priced 1080p (full HD) camcorder I had seen. I have a point-and-shoot digital camera with standard-definition video. I also have a DSLR which does not have video, but I don’t want to fork out the big bucks for one of the DSLRs with full HD 1080p video. As long as you do not expect really high quality from this camcorder, you will probably be more or less satisfied with the results. Video recording modes include 1080p (30 fps), 720p (30 fps), WVGA (60 fps), VGA (30 fps), and QVGA (30 fps). This camcorder performs well outdoors where the video is clear and sharp. For indoor video recordings, performance starts to drop off noticeably without the window coverings wide open. If you don’t have adequate sunlight from outside, even with all the lights turned on, the images begin to get grainy, even if you use the built-in light source which is not very powerful. One nice feature is the 60 fps option at WVGA resolution. The main disadvantage in my opinion is that the image stabilization works at all resolutions except for 1080p and WVGA. I took a few still photos and found the quality to be mediocre, even with adequate lighting, but I am accustomed to the image quality from my DSLR. The menu controls are not intuitive, but I got used to them pretty quickly. All in all, if you’re on a budget but would like 1080p video, this would be a nice entry-level option. Do not buy this camcorder if you demand high quality in your video recordings, especially indoors.

   Finally, I wanted to comment that I am a Mac user. I have both a 1GHz G4 Power PC iMac running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) as well as a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac running Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). I was initially unable to play the videos via QuickTime on my Power PC iMac, as it said I was missing the video codecs. So I installed a freeware plugin called Perian (w w w dot perian dot org), and it now plays the video although it is choppy because the processor is not fast enough to display the video at that resolution. On my Intel-based iMac, videos at all resolutions play smoothly with QuickTime and Perian.
   Rating: 3 / 5

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