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Mustek DV4000 MPEG4 7-in-1 Multifunctional Digital Camcorder

Mustek DV4000 MPEG4 7-in-1 Multifunctional Digital Camcorder

List Price: $199.99
Your Price: $120.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Right in the middle
Review: First off, as already said, the size is amazing - It really is about the size of a credit card. This is part of my reason for buying this particular unit, so that I could easily store it on my motorcycle for trips. The Camcorder looks nice, but feels cheaply made. The features are nice (especially when compared to the competition) and over all it performs satisfactory. The video and the still shot mode works well, but the quality seems to lack at times. The biggest downfall I have found is it could greatly benifit from a flash / light as if there is not sufficient light indoors, the video's and pics are very dark. The camera functions are pretty simple to use, well laid out, and offer many options that are only found on higher priced multi-function digital cameras.

The software included is not very user friendly, I had to load it twice to even get it to work right, however, the extra bonus accesories included in the package are nice, and you do not need to instantly go and buy anything else to start using it. I would reccomend upgrading to a bigger memory card for greater storage of pics and video.

Overall for my day to day use it is fine, but if you want to take serious video or digital pics you will need to move into a higher price range.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Mustek DV4000 MPEG4
Review: As amazing that the value of this digital camcorder perceives to be it lacks greatly on its ability to provide quality movie pictures. It offers a lot of bells and whistles for features but the output quality of both still and movie films is unacceptable. It is very convenient to use but again the picture quality is not even close to other 4.0 megapixel cameras. The movie pictures move with the grace of pictures you've seen shot from another planet, i.e., choppy and slow. Many of the still pictures are grainy. If you shoot this under low light the quality is especially poor even when you adjust for low light conditions. I'd recommend you save and spend your money on cameras more expensive that provide better quality.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Replaces Your HandyCam
Review: I purchased this camera so i could have something to record local bands playing, and just for generally messing around. I will admit, this camera is no XL1, but THAT IS NOT WHAT I PAID FOR, but it's good for filming things you want to watch later and laugh at. The digital stills are usable, and if you have photoshop, the quality really doesn't matter anyways. As a college student, I find that the voice recorder is great on days when you don't really feel like listening, and the mp3 player makes walking to class a little easier. The only real downside is that the audio quality when recording video is not that spectacular, a mic input would be the only thing I would add to this little wonder. This would make a great camera for kids who want to film themselves acting like fools.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good Value for money
Review: The first impressison was very favourable,- the camera was well packed and gave the impression and feel of good quality.

Having used this camera for appprox. 3 months I have had little occasion to use it for any other tasks than as a video camera.
I like to carry it with me at all times due to it's small size.
Overall, as an occasional user, I consider the Mustek DV4000 good value for money. Although some of the printed data may look very promising, please, do not expect the video resolution associated with some of the more expensive cameras. I found that the image quality does not just depend on the number of pixels, but on many other things (quality of the lens etc).

Posititive Qualities:
The Camera provides fairly good results on high resolution,- providing you are happy to put up with the high res. setting at 10fps as this tends to accelerates the speed of people walking or driving by.
The low light setting is helpful for indoor takes, even though the resolution is impaired.
The AEL Setting can be very userful for situations with exteme contrast, to select the area that should be correctly exposed.
The quality of the sound is remarkably true to reality.
I found the digital zoom to be very useful,- on the high res. setting,- however not beyond zoom ratio 1:2 (or there about)
The Sound Setting has shown itselve to be remarkable sensitive,-rather better than some of the analogue systems tried on other models.

Negative Qualities:
I did not consider the lower and medium resulution settings very useful,--the image quality was sadly lacking, (not what you might expect from a moder digital camera),- even though there may be benefits for imaging on computer screens. The 30fps for the low reolution settings are certainly a bonus when it comes to showing up movements.
When it comes to the performance of a still camera I am not convinced even though the results are acceptable;- my Olympus C300 Zoom gives better results.
The absence of optical zoom is a disadvantage,- a digital zoom can never make up fot this.

Recommendation: Select a flash card of adequate capacity, as the one supplies will not be adequate. Using a 128mb card, the high resolution video capacity of my camera provides approx 25 min.videotime.
For taking videos indoors during nightime, please ensure adequate lighting so that you don't have to go into to low light level mode.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not bad for a tiny camcorder with this price
Review: So far I'm pleased with the purchase, and I plan to keep it for a while. Pros and cons listed below:

Pros:
-Low price. Its only around $150 while the other top brand will cost you more $$$.
-Small size. It fits in your palm and easily in any pocket
-Looks good. The appearance of this little unit looks high tech.
-Mp3 player is nice. While don't expect top quality speakers, the sound output from the external speaker is acceptable, and you can also use head phones. 512MB sd card can hold quite a few songs.
-Video quality is decent. With resolution of 352 x 288, it runs at 30 frames per second. This is the highest for the current tapeless camcorders around this price range today.
-Battery life is good. One charge seems to last a whole day.
-Easy to view. Simply plug into tv and you can watch your videos or pictures

Cons:
-Poor still shots. Under the camera mode, the still shots at 2 or 4 mega pixels are not very sharp. When comparing shots taken from my canon s300, there's huge difference.
-No flash and needs light. Video and pictures will need external light or else it'll be dark.
-Digital zoom is not very useful. Because every time I try to zzom, the picture quality seems to suffer.
-Video at 640x480 is not very good, because its only 10 frames per second. So it's better to stick with the lower resolution at 30 frames per second.

I haven't mess around with the software that it came with, but I can just plug it into the pc and it shows up as an external drive, so I can just drag and drop the files. I'm a fan of pocket size gadgets, and I plan to keep the DV 4000 for a few months until maybe the Samsung ITCAM7 with 1.5 GB HD comes out. The gap between camcorder and digital camera is narrowing, and it's just matter of time a true all-in-one unit will appear on the market.

The bottom line is if you need to get high quality pictures or videos, you probably will need to fork out a bit more money to get something else. But if you are like me, just want the convenience of carrying a light weight camcorder in your pocket, this unit will do the job.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: help me also
Review: can somebody please e-mail me some pics of the camera. i really need o know because we go to mardi gras every year and i would like to keep some of the footage of what i see all year round , if you know what i mean so reach me at twotwo77799@hotmail.com

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: big on features.. little on price
Review: In due respect to the person who said their camera took 1.5 hrs to charge, and the manual didn't say how long it would take..I agree! it took 2 full hrs for mine to fully charge! but this is where the simularities end..as mine didn't get red hot and continued to operate without a glitch, the video quality and 4x zoom is pretty good, and VERY smooth considering the size of the lense,The image stability is great! the sound is fantastic! the features are easy to use and the software {drivers and fluff} installed without a hitch, this is truly a remarkable lil' camera for the money,it out performs my 3 yr old cannon video camcorder hands down! and is smaller than the cannons 8mm tape!!! its well worth getting another if your first one is a duece!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very satisfying for the price
Review: Mustek has done very well with the DV4000.

It's best features include size (it's about the size of a small index card) built in battery recharger, tapeless recording and a very good web cam feature.

The DV4000's main weaknesses are fairy poor still photo quality, very large file sizes and lack of flash.

Overall, it is a good tool for using outdoors or during the daylight hours. And, if you are aren't looking for something flashy or with lots of bells and whistles, this camera is a very good value.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I love this camera!
Review: It's small enough to fit in my purse and a great little camera/camcorder. If you want a dedicated camcorder/digital camera that takes professional grade photos/movies, this isn't the camera for you; however, for less than $200 it's a steal. And you can get a 512MB storage card for $100 @ buy.com to go with it!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Awsome
Review: I just got this camera a few days ago, and i have been using it almost every second of those few days. I'm a 15 year old skateboarding metal head. And I use this camera to take videos of my friends and I skateboarding at our local spots, and to listen to my heavy metal at school. This camera is the one of the best choices I have made, ever. When I received the camera i was ecstatic about it. I charged it up, while i wated i did my math homework whitch i almost never do, it only took about and hour to fully charge up, then i went out and skated, and tested it out. I took three short clips of my friends, and then when home and figured out how to use the editing programs. In the near future I plan to use this camera to make a video of all my skateboarding friends and me and put it on a disk.

What I like about this camera:
Just about every thing...
The battery lasts me about 40 to 50 munites on a full charge...
The video is moderate, it's not the best (mainly because that's not what I paid for) and it's not the worst...
The MP3 is great, good for listening to during class(scince it's the end of the year on we done do anything in class anyway)
the voice recorder is good if what your recording is like 3 feet away...

The things I think they could add to it to make it better:
An adjustable velcro srap would make it a little easyer, and make me feel more secure when i am holding the miniscule camera....
I think they should raise the price and include a 256MB card instead of a 32MB, the 32MB gets 10 minutes on economic resolition and around 6 on normal and high, (I am yet to buy a 256MB card).

I havent taken any pictures with it thus far, but im willing to bet that it is similar to the video.

If your one of those AV freaks and your looking for a great performance from this...that's not what your going to get....it gets the job done nothing special, if you want a great camera go buy a $500 camera, if you just want something to mess around with...Here you go.

Thanks for taking the time to read my review...hope it was helpful to you....and mustek is probably thanking you fro considering buying it(more thankfull if you buy it )


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