Rating: 
Summary: Eats tapes
Review: After about a year of use, ZR 40 started eating tapes. Do a google search on the topic, there are hundreds of people with the same problem. 'Remove Cassette' and 'Eject' (use those as keywords combined with 'Canon ZR' to view message boards postings) will appear on the screen, and that's the end of the toy.
Rating:
Summary: Eats tapes
Review: After about a year of use, ZR 40 started eating tapes. Do a google search on the topic, there are hundreds of people with the same problem. 'Remove Cassette' and 'Eject' (use those as keywords combined with 'Canon ZR' to view message boards postings) will appear on the screen, and that's the end of the toy.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Camcorder
Review: Excellent camcorder, does very well in all kinds of light. I have had no trouble with it indoors, and I find that it performs very well in low light. Flawlessly performs with Windows Movie Maker 2 through firewire. The sound is outstanding, considering the picture is it's strong point. I did not need the digital camera built in as I already have one. Effects are fun to play around with, especially with the handy scroll button. I have not heard the motor noise at all, so I can't see where that is coming from. My only complaint is that it shuts off too quickly if inactive, but it's really not that much of a problem. Image stablizer works really well, as I often have an unsteady hand but it is hardly noticeable with this camcorder. I just wish they made a VCR that could record the footage as well as it was taped!
Rating: 
Summary: Great with a couple of minor complaints
Review: Expecting a baby, I did research for about three weeks before I ended up with this Canon ZR40. Couple of features that I wanted to have were external mic input, analog input, no still images since I already own a nice digital camera, and most of all, affordable price tag. Amazingly, ZR40 had this all! 18x zoom is nice and its compact size is pretty neat. Still, I have minor complaints after extensive tests.1. As pointed out by many people previously, the picture is somewhat grainy specially indoors. Because this is my first digital camcorder, I don't know if this happens for other high-end models, but I suspect it may stand out somewhat more for ZR40 with only 480K CCD pixels.
2. What has also been noted was the motor noise, which is my primary concern for now. Maybe, I would not been able to tell if I had not read those reviews, but I could certainly hear the noise when recorded in a quiet environment. I tried to use an external microphone to remove the noise, in which case the noise is gone, but the external microphone does not match the internal microphone in sensitivity. (I used a low-end microphone for the test with the sensitivity of -75 dBm, though.)
3. This is a really minor point, but the camcorder automatically shuts down if I don't start recording within 5 minutes. Overall, I think ZR40 has great features at such a price and is certainly worth owning if you are looking for one in the price range.
Rating:
Summary: Best for the price
Review: I almost passed this by, because of the motor noise many people mention. But the price is unbeatable - do a good internet search and see for yourself. You do not pay for useless features, like magapixel stills - who needs 1MPix digital stills anyway - any digicam is at least 2 MPix? There is some noise; however I compared it with a friends Digital8 camera, and it also had some noise, although Canon's is more high pitched (but not noticeably louder). It might be that the noise is amplified during playback on the camcoder - I only import digital video on my computer for editing and I really have to look for noise in order to notice it.
I am totally happy with the camcoder.
Rating:
Summary: Great little digital camcorder!
Review: I bought this camcorder to replace an aging 8mm GE unit that I've had since '96. I can't believe how far technologies come in such a short time. The video is amazingly clear with the optical zoom (although it does get grainy when the digital zoom kicks in) and quality is good in many lighting conditions. I just got a firewire interface and even though I'm only using the two "(inexpensive) and free" software packages (the firewire card came with ULead Video Studio and the Canon comes with ArcSoft Showbiz), I'm having a blast editing video with my computer (in near realtime). Quite a difference than just 4 years ago when I was using a Truevision Bravado card and my 8mm (Quality was never that good and it took FOREVER to preview/compile video).
Rating:
Summary: Works great!
Review: I bought this camera after reading many reviews talking down the microphone and the battery life. I have not noticed a problem with either, yet. I am primarily using the camera to record middle school music performances with a tripod and AC adapter. It worked just fine to get the music, although I had a harder time hearing the adjudicator's comments at the solo & ensemble festival. I may invest in an external microphone, but for now I'm happy with the results.
Rating:
Summary: always "remove the tape" message
Review: I bought this model 18 months ago. Now it has big problem. I can't rewind the tape well. "remove the tape" mesasge always pop up. I sent it back to Canon for repair. They asked me $169 for repair. What can I say now? Too bad camcorder.
Rating:
Summary: Love it.
Review: I can't complain--I absolutely don't need still capabilities as I already have a much better compact digital camera than any camcorder offering. Being able to plug-and-play with iMovie on my iMac simply is amazing.
Rating: 
Summary: great price. but low resolution video...
Review: I did extensive research on this model (the whole ZR series) and I must say, a lot of things are positive for this little camera.
* light weight, * small, * bright outdoor pictures, * PRICE.
And some negative points raised by many so far, which of course I have not been able to test as I have not bought this item, is the motor noise being recorded and the night shots being grainy.
I will not discuss anything about it as they have been beaten to death by now.
What I want to talk about is the smaller CCD resolution on the ZR series camcorders.
As we know, the US spec ZR series have the 460K pixels, out of which only 290K pixels are used for video (effective pixels). We need about 420K effective pixels to get a 500 line video resolution on the TV. Most of us know that, the VHS format (video tapes) allow upto 240lines of horizontal resolution. The S-VHS tapes allow upto 400 lines and the Digital Video format goes to 525 lines (really crisp and sharp pictures) on the TV/visual media. So now, with mere 290K effective pixels of video resolution being recorded on the ZR40/45/50, the best lines of resolution would be around 300. Now, not everything is bad. If you intend to transfer your videos into VHS tapes for storage and future viewing, you will not have any complaints as VHS tapes store at 240 lines of resolution. But someone like me, who wants to store the video digitally, by burning them into DVDs or storing them in DV tapes, I would like to get the best resolution that I can, right? In simple words, I want 500 lines of resolution for my video, full stop! Even though ZR40 is a DV camera, its resolution is very poor for real digital quality video. By the way, the resolution has got everything to do with what we call SHARP, crisp and colorful pictures. It is the same difference you see between the movies played from the VHS tape and movies played from the DVD. Oh by the way, if your TV doesn't have a 500 line horizontal resolution capability, you are not getting the money's worth by renting DVDs. The TV I bought about 4 yrs ago, a proscan 32 inch, has 700 lines of horizontal resolution. So I can assume most TVs in our houses have capable enough TVs. Going slightly off topic, do you know why the picture quality of HDTVs are so sharp? Bcoz their resolutions are almost double than the 500 lines I am talking about.
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