DXG USA DXG535VK HD 8.0 Megapixel Riviera 720p

This is NOT a guy’s camcorder!!
Rating:2 out of 5 stars
Recently I mentioned to my wife that we should get an inexpensive camcorder to replace our old, never used VHSc camcorder. Well, she found the DXG-535V and ordered one. When it arrived I opened the package and saw right away that I was not going to be using this camcorder. She ordered the black camcorder, but it has rhinestones on the side! Since I take most of the pictures and videos in the family, I informed her that if we kept this unit, that task would now fall to her. I was not going to use this “girly” camcorder. I swear that this unit was designed for the teenage girl market!!

Regardless of my initial impression, I found that the camcorder is not very well made. It takes four AAA batteries, which cannot last very long, but worse yet, the batteries are locked in place using a hinged plastic door with two very small plastic clips. I previously had a Minolta camera with a similar design and the clips broke off after three battery replacements, and I really doubt that these will last much longer. In addition, getting the door to close evenly, and securely, took quite a bit of effort.

I also found that my hands were just way too large to work with this camcorder. Rotating the buttons, adjusting the zoom, pressing record, etc proved to be very awkward. Again, I think the target customer was teenage girls, not guys with large fingers and hands.

As far as the movies and pictures go….think throwaway digital camera. The pictures were not very clear and the movies were rather “flat” looking, there was no depth to the movies. Overall, this camcorder seemed more like a toy, than a real camcorder.