Customer Reviews

Samsung SCX105L MPEG4 Sports Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I plan to use the Samsung sc-x105l for cycling (MTB, Road and Motorcycle) trips. I've had the unit a few days and familiarized myself with the controls. Fumbling for setup and features is always a battery burner so I try to be proficient before giving a real-life judgement on battery life.

I did a road bicycle test yesterday in 56 degree weather, starting with a full charge (I had cycled the battery once prior to this), the image quality was set for 352 dpi at "normal". Two higher quality settings are available this is the lowest and most battery efficient. Electronic Image Stabilization was turned on which also uses more power. The LCD display door was closed and I used the external remote camera.

According to the manual, I should have gotten ~80 .minutes, the varible was the EIS, there is no mention of how much that lowers battery life. My actual battery life was 48 minutes. About half of what the manual stated.

Image quality at 352/normal was fair. When a car zipped past me, the image was not clear enough to read a license plate from 30 ft away during playback, even going frame by frame. Recording at higher resolution should help this but more testing required.

The good news was how much of the 512mb internal memory I had used in 48 minutes, which was only 95mb. I feel by increasing the resoltuion (which uses way more memory and some battery) an equal amount of memory and battery can be consumed yielding about 30 minutes of quality video.

30 minutes may not sound like much but frankly, 30 minutes of home moives is usually more than most people can take. I'll carry a spare battery and 1G memory stick top tranfer during longer trips.

BTW, the unit is amazingly small and light, build quality is sturdy. That is a big plus for the intended audience of this unit.

This thing is awesome. It's smaller and lighter than my RIM Phone! Easy to throw on the charging station, grab and go. Something that never happend w/my old Video Camera. Had to grab the whole bag, overnight charge of the battery, etc... This thing charges in an hour or two. Quality of the LCD is excellent, even on the soccerfield under direct sunlight. Quality of the video, even on normal (has 2 higher settings) is good.

Downsides: only 2 I can come up with. Definitely need to buy extra memory cards. If you are going to take on vacation w/out your laptop to download the video to, then you'll probably want to buy another 2GB's. That would give you 2-3 hours of video over a week trip. Also, you'll need an extra battery. It's only good for about an hour (I run through it in a single 8yr old soccer game). Problem right now is that I can't find an extra battery to order anywhere. Accessories aren't really out yet (as of end of May). So, plan on another $300 to make it really livable. That all said, it's the coolest gadget I own. Haven't tried the helmet cam yet, but am already planning it.

I was very excited to receive this camera. My intent was to use it for skydiving video, after all I first saw the advert for it in Parachutist magazine. Anyway, I had it for about 1 week before I sent it back. It went through batteries very quickly and captured relatively grainy and dark video and stills. It takes several seconds to ready for video or stills and if I kept it in the ready mode for too long (20 min) the battery was about gone! The lense provided a pretty narrow field of view. It is good for standard back yard applications but as an "extreme sports cam" it is not ready for the quick and constant action of up close "extreme sports". Only the external optical cam eye is water resisitant. The rest of the cam will break if exposed to heavy moisture/rain/water. Another point of contention, I early purchased this unit from Amazon for $699. By the time it was delivered the price was already down to $569.00 from Amazon! Bottom line.....Wait till it is improved and the price settles down.

I got this to record ATV riding adventures. It was this or the new super small Sony mini dv cam. I went with this because I think the mini dv cam would not hold on the trail with all the dust.
I have had this for a few days to play with so far. I bought a 1gig scan disk card with it. It will record 63 minutes on the lowest 620x480 setting with the 1 gig card. The video quility is good on the lowest setting. I edited it with I-movie on my Mac and burnd a dvd and it looks great on the normal tv.
I could not get it to work with my windows vedio editing softwere ( Pinnacle and Screenblaster) but It does work with windows movie maker.
You may want to bump up to the super fine setting if you want HD quality. I only get 22 minutes with the 1gig card on the higest settings.
The external lens is cool. It come with a head and arm band. The extrem sports guys will love this for recording thier crazy stuff.
Overall I'm happy with it.

I bought this in July immediatly before I left the country for an extended vacation. I have been using it for paragliding and snowboarding since then. Overall I think it's a great idea, but suffers in the execution. I would not recommend buying it. Unfortunately I was away too long to be able to return it.

The good
- size
- simplicity of helmet cam
- codec plugs into Apple framework - no requirement to use imagemixer if you're a mac person

The bad
- video quality
- battery life (internal & external)
- DivX codec conflict (I had to delete all other codec's before installing imagemixer to make it work)
- can't copy files back to the camera
- provided straps don't fit any of the helmets I use
- weather proof case doesn't close properly if camera is oriented to mount on top of helmet
- photo quality

Even at the "super fine" setting, the video quality is extremely poor. Colours are muddy, frame rate is jerky, white balance and exposure levels are terrible, and the lens distorts around the edges. My canon SD400 "still" camera does MUCH better video in it's VGA mode. I would rather that it didn't do stills, mp3, file browser, etc and just did good video. I don't think that's asking too much.

Hope this helps someone.

Finaly got mine for a very good price here in Chile. The only difference is here we get the SCX110L, which means it has 1GB internal memory. This would solve most of the gripes in the reviews. I'm getting more memory (1GB MSticks are the way to go, as the 2GB are still 3 times the price) but that was not the bottleneck.

Anyway, I use it for Enduro riding (attached to the googles strap) and works perfectly!!! No more messing with a camcorder, bullet cam, batteries, LANC, cables, etc... All in one package, and very sturdy!!!

The only problem is the battery, as it last for less than 2 hours (recording with breaks in between). I'm looking for the optional SB-P180A battery, but I've had no luck yet. Solving the battery issue this is THE perfect camera for motorbikers!!!

I wanted to use this product to document sports and other activities and expected that the video could show the times and dates when these activities were observed. However, although the camera has a time and date function, these items cannot be made to appear on the video.

The camcorder has a separate camera module for mounting on a helmet, etc., but the picture quality does not match that of the main camera, which makes use of the separate module inadequate for the purposes I had in mind when ordering this particular unit.

This little rig reminds me so, so much of the Sony micro cassette D series cameras/camcorders. It was way over priced for what it was when released. Everybody was excited when it released, everybody wanted one, everybody was disappointed after using it. Samsung made the exact same mistake as Sony did back in 2000 with the "D" series. While advertising it heavily in upscale adventure and extreme outdoor type magazines and packing the unit full of features, they both overlooked one simple thing- the quality of the video! I tried very hard to get video to acceptable quality to burn to a DVD. I must have 40 hours each in the two cams, working with different software, formats, etc., looking for a way to make it look "professional". I finally gave up on both.

Camera rates a very disappointing overall poor. Video quality is poor, stills are poor and depending on what sport you use it for, most likely the audio will be poor as well. This was a lot of buck, that delivers very little bang for your money. Packed full of features that are useless unless they deliver, they do not. I could NOT recommend anyone buy this model for any reason, period. Ever wonder why Samsung never released an newer, updated version of this jewel? They must know exactly what I am trying to tell you now. It is useless. Bad footage is bad footage, regardless of what device captures the video. It don't think it would be even good enough to film golf, let alone the extreme sports.

Camera is great as a "hey look what I got". Like another reviewer said, except for showing it off, it is only good as a paper weight. Looks nice in my "collection" though. Situated on the the second from the top shelf, nearer to left than right, between the Sony D45 and the Minolta K800. I think I am going to cry, LOL! But, almost without fail, about every 90 days or so, one of my buds will look at say "that's cool as hell. does it work?". I usually don't even reply. It's just too hard to admit you pissed away $600 on something that is collecting dust!

Sad but true: I would recommend anyone avoid this unit like the plague. Buy a $100 or less, SD card, "pee wee pocket" cam. Invest $100-$200 in a costume bag, strap 'er on with a bungee cord and get after it. The footage will be at least ten times better than anything the SCX105L could ever deliver.

bought this to video snow skiing. cute and compact. too bad it is such a poor quality camera. video is terrible. won't load to my computer video software that comes with it. can watch on tv, thats it.
with all the bad reviews i would hope samsung would offer a credit or something to replace it!!!!!!!!!

The camera is a great FUN TOY ! I bought it to take on my vacation to Hawaii, but while playing with it at home, I realized that the only output is HighMat and it won't play on other non Computer technology thats not MighMat, which is a new operating system for DVDS Etc, that currently is not available almost anywhere. I called BOSE and their system, like Sonys is not compatable. So if its fun you want,,,this is great, but I will have to bring my Canon Z80 onvacation. It also is not compatable with Studio 8 or other movie programs. It comes with a very confusing editor system, and can be edited with Microsoft Movie Maker...but that also needs a codec from Samsun that can be downloaded from Samsungs website - otherwise good luck!