Toshiba Camileo Z100 review

The Toshiba Camileo Z100 is a hand-held 3D camcorder with a 2.8in colour 3D touchscreen and Full HD resolution. It can also take 16-megapixel still images in 3D and has a mini-HDMI output so that you can plug the camera straight in to your 3D TV, but perhaps the best thing about the Z100 is that it only costs £154.

It’s equipped with two 5-megapixel CMOS lenses, but the Z100 shoots in 2D using the left-hand lens by default. To change that and record in 3D you must press the 3D button. The colour touchscreen displays 3D images, too, so you know the feature is activated. Understandably, the quality of the touchscreen isn’t going to be fantastic on a camera at this price, but it’s adequate. There’s quite a bit of flicker when panning, and there’s a tremendous amount of cross-talk on objects that are within one metre of the lenses, which means you see many ghost images that cause even more flicker and blur the touchscreen.

Given the price of the Camileo Z100, we were ready to criticise it heavily, but after viewing our captured 3D footage on our reference Samsung ES7000U 3D TV, we were pretty impressed. Objects within six metres of the lenses had a real sense of depth to them and didn’t just look cardboard cut-outs arranged at various distances from the camcorder. The effect isn’t overly pronounced, but it does add something to your footage and is more than just a novelty.

Sadly, the inclusion of 3D technology on a camcorder this cheap means it misses out on certain key features, such as an optical zoom. Instead, you get a 10x digital zoom in 2D mode and 4x digital zoom in 3D mode. Somewhat predictably, footage soon deteriorates into a sea of noise and blurred images when you use the digital zoom. There’s no image stabilisation technology either, so handheld footage suffers from quite a bit of shake.

Thankfully, the Camileo Z100 feels pretty tough. It’s very utilitarian in appearance and lacks elegant design features, but its touchscreen hinge feels strong and durable and the plastic doesn’t flex. You also get a detachable lens cover. We would’ve preferred a switch-operated cover, but again, you have to compromise given the price.

To record footage you’ll need an SD card. The Camileo Z10 has 128MB of built-in storage, but this is shared with its firmware, so in practice you only get enough storage for 30 seconds of video. Then again with SD cards costing as little as £13 for a 32GB card, it’s hardly a big extra expense.

This is a fun, point-and-shoot camcorder, so there are few manual functions, such as focus, but you can choose between four different white balance settings. We like the Z100’s chunky Record button, and it also has a pre-record buffer which means it actually captures those potentially precious few seconds before you press the button too.

The touchscreen monitor provides little information, which is actually a good thing because it means the low-resolution screen doesn’t become cluttered. You see the battery life indicator and the record time remaining by default, as well as the zoom meter when the zoom lever is moved. Pressing the touchscreen displays a set of options that let you delete videos, choose between movie and still modes, and open the full menu. The icons are low-resolution and chunky, but it’s mostly obvious what they mean.

Sadly, it’s the full menu that somewhat ruins the Z100. Although you only need to tap the touchscreen once to bring up the basic menu and activate the various modes, you must double-tap the icons on the full menu. This inconsistency of control takes some getting used to, and we never really liked double-tapping icons on the full menu because it often meant we accidentally activated options we didn’t want to activate. This made us nervous and we often found ourselves going back in to the menu to check we hadn’t altered something.

The Z100 provides decent image quality in daylight and has good colour reproduction for a cheap camera. Footage does look compressed, but it isn’t so bad as to ruin your video. A lack of image stabilisation does make footage jerky, so this isn’t a camcorder for taking smooth, sweeping pans of landscapes. Its low-light footage isn’t very good, not surprising given the small sensors, showing lots of noise and grain. Still, it’s good enough for hastily shot Facebook and YouTube videos.

The Z100 is a fun and easy to use camcorder in spite of its annoying touchscreen. The lack of an optical zoom is a real drawback, but if you can live without it you’ll find the Z100 an inexpensive way of recording those fun family moments in 3D.