Pansonic HC-V520 review

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.