Customer Reviews

RCA EZ409HD Small Wonder HD Camcorder (Silver)

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I received my RCA camcorder and took some pics and sample videos. How disappointing! After all this wait, the videos are totally grainy. Nowhere near a "High Definition" quality. Also, the camera feels cheap and poorly made. I'm sending it back for a refund. No more RCA (Audiovox) products for me!

It really upsets people when companies exercise shady marketing tactics in order to make money.

If you buy this camera, you will be disappointed.

Here's why:

1. 1080p at 30fps sounds wonderful, which is why I bought it. However, the actual video quality sucks. Why? Because they put in a horrible lens. Your video will have a slight grainy look to it. So it doesn't even matter that you have 1080p. I'd compare the quality of the lens to that of a pencam - which if you don't know, is really bad.

2. This may not apply to everyone, however it's almost as if it's zoomed in more than it should be. I recorded at the same time holding this cam, and my FlipMinoHD at the same time. Not only did my MinoHD (one step below the UltraHD) look far better color-wise and quality-wise, but it also captured more space than the Small Wonder.

What are the shady tactics you ask? Well, that's a great question. And quite frankly, I'm glad that you've asked!

First, they launched this on Amazon in late January I believe. ALMOST a year ago. It was on pre-order forever, and the release date was always pushed up a month. I emailed RCA far before it was released and they said it was a shipping delay - 15 days at most. Turned out to be around 4 months longer than 15 days.

My guess is they did this because they knew they had a low quality camera they're hyping up to be high quality, and that if they released it well beforehand, the bad reviews would come in which = less sales. Instead, they decided to basically trick people into buying it for nearly a year, pre-ordering it so they could get all the orders beforehand.

The reason why it's so cheap is because of the low quality parts they're using. I would have bought this camera for $300 or more if they had the brains to put a decent lens inside of it.

For the sake of the children, DON'T buy this camera! Never buying an RCA product again - congratulations RCA, you're on my list of companies that don't know what they're doing and don't understand customer value!

Buy the MinoHD or UltraHD - much higher quality.

Buy a good grade still camera and use the video in that. If you want a high definition camera, this will give you all the detail of a low grade camera with a plastic lens. (The lens is actually glass, but the image processor used is so bad that you're almost sure to be disappointed.) It's like buying a telephone and finding out the camera in it is horrible.

The automatic meter lightens and darkens the image every time you move the camera. Go to YouTube and do a search, and you'll find some samples of just how bad it is.

Manufacturers think they can just put out garbage these days, but word gets around. Don't buy something without reading a review. This thing is just awful. Don't believe me? Buy one and find out for yourself.

I guess I should have read the reviews before I opted for this camcorder. I was excited when I took it out of the box as it was so thin & included the li-on battery, then after I saw the video, I actually sent it back. Just grainy video, that's all I can say, plus the photo mode was way less than my old 2mp camera from years ago.I can say thankfully the phone customer service gal was great: even sent me an email with free postage back so I got my full refund! Now I can buy the Flip like I should have!

The camcorder is adorable and very easy to use. The quality isn't that great, very poor in low light but better than a phone camera, great for internet use but you could never play it on a tv. The software is TERRIBLE. I was never able to get the program to play my videos and RCA/Audiovox customer service is even worse. I told them about my problem and they claim they had never heard of it before but as I can see from other reviews obviously they had. They called me back a day later treating me like I was an idiot saying it must be a conflict with a codec from another camera(even though I explained to them that the only other camera is my Nikon SLR camera and it doesn't have codecs but they didn't believe me). I gave up and just returned it. I was able to upload the videos online so if that's all you want it for then it works but don't expect the software to work or to get any help from their customer service.

Like everyone else this camcorder was a dissapoitment. If you try to film in areas with dim lighting your going to recieve this reall grainy quality picture. I bought this camcorder to hopefully film some high quality hd videos on the go. I was very upset I wasted my money on this product. So I went to the local pawn shop and traded it in for a nikon digital camera so I would come out with something. These pawn shops now adays really rip you off. For now on I'm not buying anything before I read the reveiws because I bought this right when it came out and took a chance. Can you say "Bad Luck"

This is a great recorder... If it would of worked correctly.

I really liked this camera, it would of been the best thing since sliced cheese but the device was faulty.
Some times it would act like it was recording, the red light would shine and it would say REC but then
somewhere down the line it would stop recording but the red light would stay on. Later when you tried to
go back look at your video you would find out that it didn't record anything.

A lot of times the video player would say that the file was corrupted and that it had to be repaired.
Now this could of been a bad memory stick, but I tried several sticks and still the same thing.

This camera worked great for about a week and then it started to act up.

I would try this camera again if I could buy it brand new, the one I ordered was refurbished so I'm sure
something was wrong with it to begin with and they might of just over looked the issue.

Other than that it was a great recorder, small light and simple. I would say it would be 5 seconds from on to record.

I bought this camera for my husband when we were expecting our second child to take with us to the hospital. I loved the idea that it takes pictures and HD video but it doesn't do either one well. I could live with it if it took ok pics and good video or ok video and good pics but they are both very poor.

I get better picture quality from my blackberry, but the video quality is good. No flash which stinks, but it is light, portable, and easy to use. The pictures always come out blurry and since there is no flash it always looks too dark or too bright... kind or a pain in the butt.... but it is a good deal for 40 bucks...