Rating: 
Summary: Terrific value and good performance.
Review: A friend let me see this unit when she was over in Belfast from the States a few weeks ago. I was very impressed with its capabilities and thought it great value and to be solidly put together. It's also a very handy size.A lot of other reviewers have commented on the poor low-light performance of this unit, claiming that it's not even as good as their old Hi8 machines. The mistake here is that Hi8 doesn't suffer from the black crushing* that DV's high compression codec imposes on the picture to be recovered from tape. Any DV machine will have this problem, except for three chip units, which will be slightly less compromised. The only way around this is to make sure that the scene to be captured is reasonably evenly and brightly lit. *Black crushing occurs when a scene has many details tending towards dark grey to black, the DV process causing nearly black tones to be treated as black.
Rating:
Summary: Great performer - easy-to-use
Review: Canon strikes again. This little camcorder picks up where the ZR10 left off. Easiest camcorder to use. High quality of DV - you gotta love those little tapes. Functions that put it above the rest...Analog input, long battery life, media card. Use the still mode instead of a still camera. No more carrying multiple big cameras on my vacation. Just one little versatile ZR25
Rating: 
Summary: First Impressions
Review: First I want to say I'm not very knowledgeable at all about Mini-DV, and as this being my first camera as such any opinions I express are only very amateurish and I cannot compare this camera to others as I have not had the experience of using any other DV devices, and I have not had alot of time lately to play with it. But I'll say my first impressions here of it for what they are worth. First, I'll have to say my impressions about the Image Stabilisation, as far as I can tell. It's not much to be desired. If I don't hold the camera very steady in my hands or use a tripod the "shakes" are very noticeable. I have been using the camera to take footage of rural Alaska, on trails and mountains, and as you can probably guess it's rather hard to climb a rough trail without considerable shaking. It's not horrendous, but I really don't see any help from it. Again, I don't really know what to expect from it either, but so far, it's not been what I expected. But, it's also not the more desireable optical stabilisation as opposed to this cameras digital, and it is also better to just turn this feature completely off anyway when using zoom in extended ranges. Also, the low light feature does work, but is very grainy when taking indoor shots especially. It seems the camera does best in bright outdoor light, and to take decent footage of indoor scenes your lighting better be good. The various options for lighting adjustment in the menu for outdoor/indoor lighting however work great, and adjust for the different conditions well. The camera seems VERY well built. I have knocked it around considerably on the trails, thrown it in a bag and out without overdue care, and subjected it to high winds, mist, and rough handling. No problems. It feels very solid in the hands and does'nt give me any impression of fragileness. The LCD door clicks open and shut with certainty, as does the battery. The covers for the DC jack and S/DV in-out jacks are'nt though, they are made of rubber and do not seem to be very reliable, and hang by a thin rubber strip when open. They also don't seem to want to stay closed alot, and I'm always afraid of ripping them off when opening them for access. Otherwise, the cam seems very solid and able to withstand abuse. The camera fits snugly and comfortably in the right hand using the supplied strap, and it also comes with a neck strap for additional security. The controls are easily accessible considering this cameras very small size, though the main power switch is hard to move due to it's extremely small center lock button. The footage/shutter stop/start button is very nicely located and can be quickly found with the thumb. Same is true for the zoom rocker with the index finger. The Optical zoom (10X) is superb. No degradation in image quality whatsoever either all the way up to 40X in the digital zoom. This thing is like a telescope, I can zoom in on things the naked eye could never pick up even past the 40X. However......past the 40X, the image gets grainy, and is practically worthless past 100X. It gets so pixelated past 100 that I turned the option off and only use the 40X digital zoom option. Again, it is best to turn stabilisation off when using zoom past 10X optical. The image quality so far is excellent. Very clear, the colors are accurate and vibrant, and noticeably improved over Hi-8 when dubbed to a VHS tape. The zoom is smooth, and very fast/slow according to how much pressure you place on the rocker swith. The DV out/in works flawlessly with my firewire terminal, and I've been using MGI Videowave 3 for editing and compression. BTW, I can also highly recommend that program, very user friendly and works great. I may someday want to graduate to a more robust application, but for now it's awesome. I also called their tech support for a question I had regarding capture (I was being an idiot, enough said of that!) and the support person was very friendly, patient and helpful. The ZR25's battery life seems excellent. I have not yet ever completely depleted it using the included Li-ion BP-512 pack, even using the LCD constantly. Canon has available a higher capacity pack as an accessory, but I see no need for it for my uses. The LCD quality is not what I expected. According to specs, it's 2.5 inch LCD is approximately 112,000 pixels. I'm not sure how that compares to other screens in it's class but I'm sure it's low. I always have to keep in mind that my footage is going to look 3X better than what I'm previewing on it. It's also terrible in sunlight (I imagine this may be common with most DVcams, but the LCD on my Kodak digicam spanks it big time). The viewfinder however is more than adequate. Nice color, and seems to be accurate according to the actual footage taken. It also swings up and away from the battery pack for easy replacement of the battery, and it's angle is good for comfort of use when extended. Overall, though the CCD is admittedly of lower resolution compared to the Allura's, (1/4 inch CCD, approx. 460,000 pixels, approx. 290,000 effective) but the quality of footage is so far excellent and more than satisfactory to me as long as the lighting is adequate. I have not yet tried the still image mode, but I did not buy this camera for that feature as I have two digital cameras for that purpose (Kodak DC-4800's, which, by the way, I can personally highly vouch for, they take superb images, have a full range of manual exposure settings, and offered with optional lenses with lens adapter accessory). I'm pleased with it more than not. I'll write more on this camera as I gain more experience with it, and I hope this somewhat helps others who might be considering purchasing this model.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor low light - I returned camera
Review: I ended up returning this camcorder because of poor low light performance. I looked long and hard at many digital camcorders. I did a couple weeks research and narrowed it down to about six choices, then my wife and I spent an entire day going to all the local camera shops and playing with the cameras and we narrowed it down to three, the Canon ZR-25, the Sony DRC-PC9, and the Sony DCR-TRV30. We liked the size of the small Sony DRC-PC9, but it was too awkward to hold and the buttons were hard to reach while filming. The Sony DCR-TRV30 seems like an awesome camera, the resolution was obviously better than any of the others (we did a lot of A/B testing on video monitors), however it's nearly as big as our 10 year old 8mm Sony (...). The Canon was nifty to hold, ergonomically it felt the best in our hands (...). So as far as low light, we did some testing in a relatively dark store and aimed the cameras into a dark corner painted black and spent time focusing on some dark camera bags that were in the corners. All the cameras seemed to do just fine. Of course the night vision was cool on the Sony's, but we weren't sure how useful that would be for us. And this was a dark store, a mellow upper end audio/video store, not a brightly lit super store. So for the cost and ergonomics, we bought the Canon ZR-25MC. We choose it over the ZR-10 for the multimedia card. We liked the idea of snapping quick low-res pictures of the kids that we could send as emails, plus the ZR-25MC hasprogressive scan. OK, so we get it home and start to take pictures that night. It was in our living room and we had two bright lights on and a Christmas tree lit, also this room is painted white. So I took about 10 minutes of video and snapped a bunch of photos. First gripe, you have to switch between the video tape and the multimedia card via a toggle switch. So if you hit the picture button while you are using the video tape "mode" the camera will send the picture to the tape for 5 seconds, instead of just sending it to the card! How stupid! I bought the camera to send video to the video tape and pictures to the multimedia card. True, we should have noticed this before we bought it, but we didn't. There is no way to change this,it should at least be a set-up option. I could understand capturing pictures to the tape if the card was full, but I don't want to have to flip a toggle switch that I have to stop and look for when I want to snap picture. I think that was a poor design on Canon's part. I don't know if the Sony's behave the same way. OK, second gripe, and the reason we returned the camera, the low light is terrible. I had read user reviews on every web site I could find (a lot of them) and had read about this issue, but some reviews said the low light was OK. So I figured it would be OK for taking pictures of my kids. But these indoor videos were shockingly grainy. I'm not a resolution or quality freak, I'm a casual video user and these indoor shoots were un-usable. I had expected this camera to do at least as well as our 10 year old Sony 8mm camcorder and it was no where near as good, the 10 year old Sony ROCKS side-by-side to this brand new digital camcorder in low light. OK, so we decided to reserve judgment until the daytime. I took about another 10 minutes of video in our house during the daytime. All the dark areas (not in direct light) had grain and even the shadowed areas in a room with four skylights had grain (at was a cloudy/rainy day - without direct sunlight). We were flabbergasted. This was exactly what we bought the camera for, to take pictures of our kids playing (at least 50% of the time indoors) and the camera was virtually useless. There aren't many times we can film outside in the sunshine here in the Pacific Northwest! We decided to return the camera. Believe me, I hate returning things and it was a big deal for us to decide this. So after about an hour of badgering the salesman that we bought it from, he agreed to return our money without the restocking fee. He actually took me aside and said all the digital cameras did this. He picked up a three CCD (...) JVC camera and said it too was bad. He said that some of the three CCD Sony's (big $$) were pretty good, but basically that consumer digital cameras aren't as good as they should be yet. Wow, I was surprised by this. I guess they can't use that as a sales pitch before you buy the camera. Well that's our MiniDV camcorder tale. We are still using our 10 year Sony 8mm camcorder.
Rating:
Summary: OK, I Changed My Mind
Review: I never used a camcorder before and several people strongly recommended this one. At first, I was impressed by how light it was and compact but between the instruction manual and what seemed liked 200 small switches, hidden doors and gadgets, it got confusing. Last week was my birthday and I took it along figuring why not? Everybody who saw it was more than impressed by how small it was. But it began to show it's true colors when they also finally figured out how to use it (some of those switches are too small for even the smallest fingers). It did not do too well under low light conditions (even though the restaurant had patio windows and the sun was pouring in) but it picked up EVERY word and acted like a pro. When I got home, I discovered how ultra-easy it was to put the recording onto my home computer (with the IEEE 1394 cable which really should have been included. Come on Canon!) I had to zip the file but it has impressed the daylights out of everybody who has gotten it. More impressed by this were the people who were at the party as they could not believe how something that small could do so many tricks. So, if you want something that is easy to tote about and reliable, this is the one for you!
Rating:
Summary: OK, I Changed My Mind
Review: I never used a camcorder before and several people strongly recommended this one. At first, I was impressed by how light it was and compact but between the instruction manual and what seemed liked 200 small switches, hidden doors and gadgets, it got confusing. Last week was my birthday and I took it along figuring why not? Everybody who saw it was more than impressed by how small it was. But it began to show it's true colors when they also finally figured out how to use it (some of those switches are too small for even the smallest fingers). It did not do too well under low light conditions (even though the restaurant had patio windows and the sun was pouring in) but it picked up EVERY word and acted like a pro. When I got home, I discovered how ultra-easy it was to put the recording onto my home computer (with the IEEE 1394 cable which really should have been included. Come on Canon!) I had to zip the file but it has impressed the daylights out of everybody who has gotten it. More impressed by this were the people who were at the party as they could not believe how something that small could do so many tricks. So, if you want something that is easy to tote about and reliable, this is the one for you!
Rating: 
Summary: Missed Opportunity!
Review: I purchased the ZR25 for the Christmas holidays. I was attracted by its snazzy design, compact size, great ergonomics and price (especially when considering Canon's free leather bag and battery pack xmas promotion). The camcorder's operation was extremely easy and intuitive. Exterior shots were outstanding in all conditions. Sound quality was excellent. Unfortunately, its performance in interior conditions was disappointing. The images always appeared to be grainy. Tough to understand why because my home's interior features white walls and has ample lighting i.e. not "low light" conditions. For comparison purposes, I shot similar interior scenes using my trusty, 12-year old RCA full size VHS camcorder (what a great workhorse!) and 6-year old entry level Samsung 8mm camcorder. Both produced superior images. I returned the ZR25 for this reason. What a missed opportunity! Canon could have really aced this market segment. It clearly has the best overall design. Hopefully, they will correct this deficiency with their next ZR generation.
Rating:
Summary: Missed Opportunity!
Review: I purchased the ZR25 for the Christmas holidays. I was attracted by its snazzy design, compact size, great ergonomics and price (especially when considering Canon's free leather bag and battery pack xmas promotion). The camcorder's operation was extremely easy and intuitive. Exterior shots were outstanding in all conditions. Sound quality was excellent. Unfortunately, its performance in interior conditions was disappointing. The images always appeared to be grainy. Tough to understand why because my home's interior features white walls and has ample lighting i.e. not "low light" conditions. For comparison purposes, I shot similar interior scenes using my trusty, 12-year old RCA full size VHS camcorder (what a great workhorse!) and 6-year old entry level Samsung 8mm camcorder. Both produced superior images. I returned the ZR25 for this reason. What a missed opportunity! Canon could have really aced this market segment. It clearly has the best overall design. Hopefully, they will correct this deficiency with their next ZR generation.
Rating:
Summary: Major Audio annoyance
Review: I purchased this Camcorder after reading every review I could find. I have to say that I love the size and function of the camera. The pictures are great and its solidly built. BUT.....and this is a BIG but, the humming on the audio is absolutely maddening. I have read maybe 5 reviewers that mentioned the Mic picking up the motor noise. Other reviewers stated that the heard no such noise. So believing that maybe it was an anomaly I went ahead and bought the camera. After watching the recording I cant believe that every single reviewer would not hear that humming. In fact, I have not read about the hum in any professional review of this camera. I cant imagine that all the models of this type do not have this problem. Im totally torn over this camera. If I had known that the problem was so noticable I would have looked at another model.
Rating: 
Summary: Defective Product-Avoid
Review: I purchased this camcorder in November and have successfully used 4 tapes. Very easy to use and compact. Most still pictures ended up being dark, but in regular daylight most video was of good quality. Last month, I inserted a brand new tape and it ended up jammed. I couldn't eject it and the camera wouldn't perform any other function. I returned it to the place of purchase (where I had an extended warranty) and all they could do was send it back to Canon for repair. I figured this was no big deal, until I did some research. Seems that the tape jamming problem is a reoccurring problem. A friend has the same model and they have sent it to the factory twice and it still isn't working. If you surf the review boards on different sites you will see others reporting the same problem. I hope Canon can fix our camcorder, but if this is a known problem that can't be fixed, they should recall this model. I encourage anyone else who encounters this problem to post a review and pressure Canon to address the issue.
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