Pansonic HC-V520 review

Panasonic is well known for its award-winning 3MOS camcorders, such as the Best Buy-winning HC-X920, which uses three separate sensors to capture fantastic-looking footage, but Panasonic has always provided excellent entry level camcorders too, the latest of which is the Panasonic HC-V520 – an evolution of last year’s Panasonic HC-V500.

It’s a compact camcorder with a single 1/5.8in BSI MOS sensor, a 50x optical zoom, Panasonic’s excellent Hybrid Optical Image Stabilisation system and a built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi adaptor that lets you stream video to your TV or PC among other things. The HC-V520 is also capable of capturing Full HD footage at a respectable maximum bitrate of 28Mbit/s in the AVCHD 2.0 format and recording audio in two-channel Dolby Digital Stereo.

Although the sensor size remains the same, the HC-V520’s 50x optical zoom is longer than the HC-V500’s 38x optical zoom. The built-in Wi-Fi adaptor is certainly new. Otherwise, the HC-V520 looks and feels similar to the HC-V500.

Physically, it feels like an entry level camcorder, with its plasticky, slightly cheap feel, but in some places it actually feels better built than the more expensive HC-V720. On our review models at least, the HC-V520’s zoom lever felt sturdier than the HC-V720’s lever. Even the Mode switch on the rear of the camcorder felt tougher. Even so, the HC-V520’s port covers and SD card cover feel a little too cheap for a £425 camcorder.

As for connections, the HC-V520 provides the bare necessities and nothing more. It just has a Mini USB for transferring your footage and images to your PC, and Mini HDMI and AV outputs for connecting it to your TV or projector. If you need a microphone input, a headphone output and an accessory shoe, you should consider the Panasonic HC-V720 instead.

IMAGE QUALITY

In daylight, the HC-V520’s image quality didn’t seem to have improved much on that of the HC-V500. Compression artefacts were evident, with certain surfaces and textures having both a fuzziness and blockiness about them. In our daylight rooftop footage, for example, the noise is very noticeable on the edges of the railings and various other objects, such as the construction materials on the building site opposite our office (often referred to as Gibb’s effect or Mosquito noise). Chroma and luminance noise was also present. The HC-V520 certainly performed better in outdoor and brightly lit indoor locations than dark environments, comparative to our expectations that is, as evidenced by the prevalence of luminance noise in our low-light test.

You can see a hint of mosquito noise in this shot, around the railings

Compression effects were also noticeable on various textures, such as the fur of some of our toys. Part of our toy chicken’s fur is hit by a light source that changes in intensity, and this appeared flat, slightly blocky and without texture. The fur appears fairly well rendered in other parts of the toy, although it lacks the detail seen in the HC-X920’s footage. Although we’ve highlighted various compression effects and noise, the HC-V520’s captured footage still looks good for a sub-£500 camcorder. Colours are well reproduced and it captures a decent amount of detail. For overall video quality, there wasn’t that much difference between the HC-V520 and the HC-V720 despite the latter unit’s larger sensor.

As you’d expect, Panasonic’s image stabilisation technology does a fantastic job at reducing camera shake and wobble. It’s so good that with the HC-V520 attached to our reference wobble board and image stabilisation switched on, there’s a very slight vertical bounce that’s hardly noticeable. Even so, the HC-V520 seemed to suffer from slightly more bounce than higher-end HC-V720, which remained incredibly well composed in the same test.

This screen capture shows the Panasonic HC-V520 image quality in dark environments, notice that the fur of the toy chick that’s bathed in light has lost texture

To make best use of the HC-V520’s long optical zoom, you’ll still need to mount it on a tripod to keep it steady if you zoom to the end of its extension. The 80x intelligent zoom does a good job of extending the zoom range digitally without introducing noise, but it isn’t long before the two digital zoom ranges descend into a cacophony of chroma and luminance noise.

PLAYBACK

Once recorded, you can review footage using the HC-V520’s 3in touchscreen monitor, which is bright and responsive. For some reason, the HC-V520 has a lighter, brighter menu than the other HC camcorders we’ve seen, with the background being a whiter shade of grey and the icons being coloured. The menu is organised in the same way as other HC camcorders, which is no bad thing. Options are sensibly organised in sets of submenus, and although the menus are graphically unremarkable, it doesn’t take long to work out where everything’s located.

A major new feature is the HC-V520’s built-in Wi-Fi adaptor. Connecting to your network can be a bit fiddly because of the size of the resistive touchscreen, but once set it’ll remember the settings. The Wi-Fi adaptor lets you control the HC-V520 remotely using the Panasonic Image app (available at the App Store and Google Play for iOS and Android platforms respectively). The app lets you zoom in, capture still photos and record videos, but at the time of review we found it slow and a little unresponsive, even though we used a third-generation iPad and iPhone 4S. The HC-V520 also supports DLNA media streaming to a compatible TV.

If the HC-520 appeals to you, but you don’t think you’ll benefit from the extra Wi-Fi features and longer zoom, it’s worth noting that you can currently get the outgoing HC-V500M for just £350 from shop.panasonic.co.uk . The HC-V500M is the same camcorder as the HC-V500, but it has 16GB of storage built in to it. If you need extra physical connection ports, consider the HC-V720, the top of Panasonic’s HC-V range. Otherwise, the HC-V520 is a great sub-£500 Full HD device that’s ideal for use as a general-purpose family camcorder.