Panasonic PV-GS85 Reviews

Short Life and needs 4x4 Firewire to download
by SMILE LaDy from California, USA, 2009-03-28

My Camera PV-GS85 is a little over a year old, I did not use it for about 4 months took it out and DEAD, No lights at all even with a fully charged battery, and Power Cord. It has never been exposed to extreme heat or cold or dropped. I took it to a local camera shop to make sure it was not me, they said it was DEAD and would have to be sent to Panasonic. Also I did not like the fact that I could not use USB cord to download, had to buy a firewire cord 4x4 pin, should have been included. Also the Joy Stick is a little tricky . Now I am trying to figure out what to do with the DEAD camera only 6 months use, It was nice while it lasted, and died after the Warranty. If anyone has experience this please Post... Paid too much, for so little.

Not impressed
by Marco , 2009-01-03

I am not impressed with this camcorder. Let me summarize why:

1) If you want to connect your camcorder to your computer, you will need to remove the battery. As a matter of fact you need to remove the battery, if you want to hook it up for any reason.

2) You cannot charge the battery and use the camcorder on ac power at the same time.

3) It may take still pictures (the 85 does), but the quality is mediocre. It compares to a 1.3 MP camera in a cell phone, if that.

4) No review mentions this so I thought I should. When connecting the camcorder to the computer, you have to do it in this order: a) turn everything of, b) connect the cables, c) turn on PC, turn on camcorder. If you fail to do that chances are that your lens will be fried in the process. It happened to me, which meant I had to send it in and have it repaired for $120 even thought the part was still under warranty. That cost was just for labor.

5) bad warranty: 6 months for parts, 3 months for labor

6) bad customer service. When calling customer service I got stuck in loops of pressing ones and zeros and various other numbers trying to guess which option was best and often ended up with an someone announcing the address of a repair center. Sorry, but I would like to know a little bit more than just an address that is also printed in the manual - like what exactly to send, whether to include battery and or cables , etc.

7) the image quality is really not all that great in bad light. If you want to take a good video of your son crawling for the first time, you better make sure that the lighting is good.

One good thing: I like the joystick (one-touch) control quite a bit. It allows you to control the thing with one hand will steadying it with the other.

All in all I must say that using this camera has not been that much fun. I have learned to dislike it enough to hand it over to my wife whenever a video is to be made.

EDIT: I am not sure why this camcorder is so expensive now. I bought it for about $230 here at amazon in November 07...

Very Good Camcorder - Recommended
by CFH from Blue Ridge Summit, PA USA, 2008-10-19

The "Panasonic GS85" is a great camcorder for most general uses. We had a need for a second video camera on a shoot of an instructional video for our small business and ended up borrowing a friend's GS85 for a few weeks of heavy taping.

Overall, the camera performed very well and exceeded most of my expectations for ease of use and quality, with the following observations:

Pros -
Good image quality *
Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) works very well
Accurate auto White Balancing
Conveniently placed controls
Great battery life

Cons -
"Cold" Accessory Shoe
No built in light

* While the image quality was very good, it did not match the quality of our high-end primary camera (Canon GL2). We ended up buying Panasonic PV-GS320 3.1MP 3CCD MiniDV Camcorder with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom, which is in the same family as the GS85 but has 3CCDs and has a vastly superior image.

Highly recommended for home users! I also recommend the Digital Concepts Battery for Panasonic CGA-DU21 / Hitachi DZBP-14WS, it is a great long life battery.

not sure if any GS85 is as faulty
by E. KUZMIN from Missouri, USA, 2008-09-05

as mine. but mine possibly seemed to have poor (defective?) cmos sensor. As a result. autofocus was extremely slow and also resolution dropped too low even in the shade, not mentioning real low light. Overall picture quality in SP was worse than with my old Panasonic with same 680kpix sensor in LP. Maybe just my bad luck...
Great features are: fantastic OIS; VERY comfortable finger controls; webcam capability.

Great Camcorder
by Casey A. Morgan , 2008-09-01

This camcorder is great for the normal person. It was not made for the sim-pro or pro vedio maker. This is a very good camcorder for the price. It is easy to work, has great Zoom and the OIS is great. I have used this camcorder every where. Please stay away from the PV-GS80, for a few dollars more you can get the PV-GS85 that does a lot more and I had the 80 and had problems with it the 85 is so much better.