Well, I have had this camcorder now for a week and tested it in many lighting situations and locations and I must say I'm very impressed. Outside filming my niece and dogs in the yard the videos are crisp viewed on my 40" Sony HD LCD TV. I would give it a 5 out of 5. In my eyes, looks broadcast quality. Indoors with varying light was also impressive although I did notice a little graininess. I'd give low light a 4 star rating. Being as anal as I am, I did a little test. Take it for what it's worth.

Now I am the most anal person you will probably meet and maybe set my expectations too high at times, but I started flipping through some of the HD channels on t.v. to do a little comparison and noticed too a bit of graininess if I stood right up to the television. Now I know nobody watches t.v from three inches away, I just wanted to compare what was being broadcasted to what I was able to film with this camera. I must say, this camera's footage is nearly spot on in many instances (TNT in HD, FOX in HD, USA in HD) I'd like to believe I have a good signal from my cable provider into my television, so in overall video quality, I'd give this camera 5 stars.

So why not 5 stars overall for this camera? Well, maybe I'm used to my iphone's touchscreen too much, but the touchscreen on the viewfinder drives me nuts. I might be old school (34 years old), but I really prefer actual buttons to navigate menus and such. I used to own a Canon Vixia HF100 and really enjoyed the navigation stick and buttons. I would say I have average sized hands, and find it a bit hard to get the right menu selection with my finger at times.

Now I did go with the 16gb version and have no regrets though I can't ever see myself opting for using its internal storage. I like to be able to pop out my sd card and just watch my videos on my PS3 or computer for editing instantly. Don't like the hassle of transferring images via usb. Also, wanted a black body as opposed to the silver one. Yes, I'm that picky. LOL. I like the fact it has two sd card slots, so storage should never be an issue.

I also like that canon took a chance on just making it lower megapixel for ideal HD recording. Let's be honest, if you want to take pictures, use a real camera. I'd much rather have better video quality and sacrifice still photos. I know a lot of people complain about this, but it seems to make sense. You're getting "larger" pixels for higher quality low light recording. It's also nice that Canon included the HD CMOS Pro censor in this model. The same one found in the higher end G10, saving you quite a few bucks.

Overall, I'm very pleased with my purchase and feel Canon has put out a very competitive product with great results. I've already bought a lens hood and extended battery to compliment the camera. (Stock battery is too small and leaves a noticeable gap at the edge. A BP819 should fit the bill nicely. I hope this review was helpful. I know a lot of reviewers commented on its other features, so that is why I omitted some of the other points. Thanks for reading.