JVC Everio GZ-MG77U

By Terry Sullivan
For a camcorder so small you could easily stick it in your jacket pocket, the JVC Everio GZ-MG77U ($900 list) hard drive camcorder packs a hell of a wallop, storage-wise. At 2.8 by 2.8 by 4.3 inches and weighing just under a pound, this sleek, compact hard drive camcorder has 30 gigabytes of storage. That's about 430 minutes of video at the highest quality setting. But for its list price of $900, I had hoped the video quality and the still-camera features would be better.

The 2.7-inch–wide LCD worked well, but solarized too easily when viewed from an angle. This problem is compounded by the GZ-MG77U not having a viewfinder. Although this allows a smaller size, the lack of a viewfinder can cause problems when you are shooting on a bright sunny day and the screen is washed out. I did like the way the menus are presented on the LCD. They are fairly structured and easy to navigate.

JVC's Nightalive mode, intended for low-light recording, didn't perform very well in my tests, especially when compared with Sony SR100's Nightshot mode. The GZ-MG77U's night footage was streaky, blurry, and almost surreal looking. By comparison, the SR100 displayed smoother, clear footage, although its image lacked realistic color.

I was pleased to find that JVC's drop-detection feature—which automatically turns off the camera when it senses it has been dropped—worked perfectly. If the camcorder is dropped, the recording head is moved away from the hard drive, avoiding damaging it. Although we couldn't see inside the camera to test whether this actually took place, we did several drop tests, and the camcorder turned off each time. When you turn it back on, there is a message that the drop-detection feature has been activated and the camcorder had been turned off. I like this better than Sony's approach on its SR100, which simply displays an icon on the LCD indicating that drop detection was activated.

Overall, I found the GZ-JG77U's video footage clear and sharp, though slightly overexposed, which blew out some of the highlights. Color seemed to be very accurate and vibrant, and the camcorder performed well in low light, producing little noise and few artifacts in the video footage. JVC's digital image stabilization (DIS) worked well enough during my tests. In our action clip, the Everio GZ-MG77U had problems with the autofocus mechanism, at least at the start. It seemed to shift back and forth a number of times before locking into place. The JVC also had decent sound, but it wasn't quite as good as that of the Sony SR100.

The JVC scored a decent average of 425 lines of resolution, the same as the Sony SR100, on our EIA Resolution Chart. I also had no problem importing the video clip into Adobe Premiere Elements 2 for editing.

The GZ-MG77U's still-camera features are pretty limited. It has only 2-megapixel images that aren't good for much other than Web use. The 6.2-second boot-up time is very slow, although the 2.6-second recycle time is better. Resolution averaged 725 lines, which is low even for a 2MP camera. I detected some shutter lag, but not as much as on the Sony SR100.

Although JVC was the first to introduce the hard drive camcorder, the Sony SR100 has a slight edge over the Everio GZ-MG77U. Neither is the essence of a great camcorder, but both have qualities that make them reasonable buys for consumers.

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