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back to article Toshiba Camileo S20

Toshiba’s Camileo S20 is aimed at a very demanding consumer. The type of consumer who wants a highly portable pocket camcorder with HD recording, and yet, has a budget of just £120. So, the Camileo S20 seems to offer it all – price, performance and portability. But can it really deliver so much for so little? Toshiba Camileo …

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  1. Frostbite
    Unhappy

    A budget camera, yes.

    I bought one of these and it is pants.

    Not what I would call HD quality, my pocket stills camera takes better video and the zoom on the S20 is woefull.

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  2. Bigstoo
    Alert

    Good....Yes, Spare parts...No

    My missus bought me the Camileo S20 a couple of month ago from QVC (dont ask) and I have found it a great liitle camera, impressed with the HD video, and with 16Gb cards quite cheap its an easy choice. But I have tried everywhere to get hold of a spare battery for it and they just dont exist. I have even tried Toshiba direct who couldnt help me and gave me the advice of looking on eBay!!! Now if they dont sell them how the hell are ebay going to be selling them?!? The battery has the BL-5C model stamped on it which is the exact same model as the battery found in some Nokia phones, but it doesnt work, must be a different mA rating or something. My search continues.....unless anyone knows different?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      pixmania

      Pixmania sell the S20 bundled with something called a PX-1425, which is also available separately for 20 quid. Could be the answer...

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  3. Euchrid

    Zi8

    Any chance of comparison with Kodak's Zi8? These cameras have very nice performance and can be picked up for the same amount of the S20, but also includes an external mic input.

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  4. Scott Mckenzie

    Motion Stabiliser?

    Does this one suffer the same issue as the others though, that it has image stabilisation, provided you don't want 1080p??

    The colours looked pretty washed out with the deer in the park shot, but otherwise for the money it doesn't seem bad...

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    1. Euchrid
      Reply Icon

      Stabiliser

      You're quite right, the stabiliser doesn't work with the 1080p shooting mode. Like other similar cameras, it's a digital stabiliser so isn't a huge help but better than nowt - but normally you'd be better off using stabilising features within editing software.

      If shooting in HD with a small handheld like this, you’d probably be better off using a tripod – the Gorillapod is fantastic for this sort of thing.

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  5. James Hughes 1

    This made me laugh

    "Motion detection too, worked well, although be warned, just moving the Camileo S20 is enough to activate it"

    So, the motion detector works pretty well then.

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  6. Tom R
    Happy

    Stamford

    Good old sunny stamford! :D

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  7. Rob Davis
    Thumb Down

    Why not 24p mode as well - for easier archive to blu-ray?

    Why not 24p mode as well - for easier archive to blu-ray?

    Manufacturers still haven't seemed to have got it into their thick heads: They don't all offer full true hd at 1920x1080 at 24p - 24 full frames per second.

    24 is blu-ray compatible which means less transcoding work needed on the original footage, compared with a non-24p format such as 30p reviewed here.

    Blu-ray offers a final, permanent (debate about longevity about the chemical compounds aside), solid-state, reasonably robust and portable medium to archive and share your precious footage.

    Or do movie-makers want to leave their precious footage on a more delicate, easily deletable, flash memory card that will fill up, or a hard drive that could crash?

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    1. Euchrid
      Reply Icon

      re: Why not 24p mode as well

      Off the top of my head, I would say because of the following:

      Problems with fast motion – as a format 24p handles this less well that shooting at more frames per second. You really need to plan your shooting in order to avoid choppy footage, which means it’s not great for capturing ‘the moment’, which is why many buy this kind of camera.

      Lack of editing software that can natively handle 24p – really you’re looking at pro software that can handle it well. Similarly how many consumers will have the hardware to burn blu-ray?

      Cheapness of the camera – at this price, I doubt many are seeing the camera as a long-term investment and therefore aren’t looking at a ‘future-proof’ buy. The price point is low enough to be a strong impulse buy when the latest and greatest version comes out.

      24p, what? – I suspect a lot of consumers don’t know what hell that is, let alone care.

      The way users output footage – although some of these cameras produce great results and would be suitable for professional uses (especially if there’s an external mic input like the Zi8), an awful lot of users will using it to email clips or uploading them to YouTube (more than a few cameras are marketed as being great for YouTube).

      Re: your last point (“Or do movie-makers want to leave their precious footage on a more delicate, easily deletable, flash memory card that will fill up, or a hard drive that could crash?”), well as we all know every computer user takes a robust approach to such things…

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  8. Matt 13
    Thumb Down

    title

    I got the sister model of this camcorder last year on release... its awful it may technically be HD, but in 1080i your hard pressed to notice it over the compression and interlace errors, the colours too were crazy! try videoing a 2 yearold on his new trampoline in the sunshine... nope! it worked ok for almost static subjects though! in the end, sent it back waited a few months and got the kodak, which is much better, but not a patch on the titanium sony thing my mum bought!!

    overall, the kodak is passable, the Tosh - an SD camcorder produces a better image!

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