Excellent Camcorder with one really MAJOR flaw
Panasonic finally released a 1920x1080p60 camcorder to the market (Sony still refuse to add Progressive and canon max out at 1920x1080p30 or p24)
With the TM700 Panasonic did combine the smooth motion of 1080i60 with the crisp image of a progressive motion
I can not praise the footage quality from this camcorder it's basically the best camcorder i have ever used it beats my HF100 and HF S100 when it comes to sharpness and motion by far (I still prefer Canon colors though however Panasonic colors looks exactly as we see them in real life Canon colors are unrealistic but looks more fun to me)
The wide angle 35mm~ is much better than my previous canons (Canon 43mm~ a little bit zoomed in) but still not as wide as Sony latest camcorders 29mm~ The stabilization From TM700 is really groundbreaking All low hand shake are completely gone! as if you are using a tripod almost as good as Sony stabilization (Sony stabilization is the best in the market Canon got the worst stabilization from the major companies)
Now about the Major flaw with TM700... something i didn't see coming and would have properly canceled my order if i knew about it before i bought it the Audio is really noisy ! TM700 got a built in Fan on the side (Sony/Canon does not have a fan like tm700) the fan is noisy and the microphone will pick up the noise now if you think closing the LCD and using the viewfinder will eliminate the fan noise you couldn't be any wrong! close the LCD and the fan noise will be even higher ! problem is I'm afraid that it will collect dust over the months and it will properly be even louder by then or might even break.
Other than the Fan noise (It sound like older tape camcorders noise through the entire video if you are familiar with tape noise) it's an excellent camcorder you can capture low light indoors without any problem (Much better than my canon camcorders when it comes to low light) you can't hear the fan noise if you capture outdoors or in a noisy environment but for indoors or a quite environment you will hear it.
Finally about the 1920x1080p60 you really need a quad core to even playback the footage! my Dual Core 2 Duo 2.5GHZ laptop can not play the footage at all (Trust me i tried everything it's not a codec problem but you need power to play the footage) even PS3 can not play the footage smoothly the PS3 will struggle to playback the video (Will freeze about half a second for every 4 seconds of playback)
There is no 1920x1080p30 option in this camcorder it's either 1920x1080p60 28Mbps or 1920x1080i 17Mbps
The camcorder playback the footage just fine though
Some people are having trouble to edit the videos well i use Sony Vegas Pro 9 and had no problems editing the 1080p60 footage.
If you use an external microphone that only pick sound from the front you properly wont care about this flaw but for my use (Traveling etc) i need my camcorder to be as portable as possible so using an external microphone is not an option
This camcorder would have gotten 5 Stars from me if it were not for the Fan issue.
Update : Fan issue Test done by someone else [...] "Just search in VIMEO" "Panasonic TM700 indoor audio test"
Update 2 : Returned the camcorder.... the noise issue is really ruining my videos the noise is not stable it does change when you pan or change the position of the camcorder read my 6th comment in comments below for video sample since amazon wont let me post linksMore detail ...
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