Canon Legria HF G10

Ease of Use (6.25)

The HF G10 is not geared towards beginners, let's make that clear. It is more like a prosumer or professional product wrapped up into a compact package. The camcorder has a lot of features, particularly advanced features, than your average novice user would be most likely to ignore. Despite all this, the G10's auto mode is simple and easy to use—it's really no different than the auto mode on any other Canon camcorder. Pros may complain that the camcorder feels constricted and awkward due to its cramped design, but Canon does attempt to offer customisation (with assignable buttons) and a professional feel with the large manual focus ring.

Canon produces some of the best instruction manuals in the business, and, while the HF G10 is a complex camcorder, the manual should help you figure out everything you know. The camcorder itself doesn't have any tool tips or info boxes built into the menu system, though, and that is something we'd like to see.

The menu system on the HF G10 can be daunting, specifically because the camcorder is, well, loaded with controls. There are so many options crammed into the little camcorder that the menu looks flooded with features. It's not a huge deal, and we're sure any dedicated user will get the hang of the menu system, but it is definitely confusing at first look. Canon doesn't help by giving the menu options very good labels or icons. Some of them are difficult to decipher for this reason, so you'll probably need a bit of instruction manual perusing before you master the menus on the G10.

There's two menus on the HF G10. When you press the function button on the LCD it brings you to a screen full of small icons (the confusing screen we talked about above). These icons and buttons represent all sorts of features on the camcorder that are meant to be quickly accessible, as well as accessible during recording (for some of them). The full menu, which has the traditional scrolling list design, can be viewed by clicking on the menu button that sits at the upper left after you open the function menu.

The Function Menu has a lot of icons that may be difficult to decipher upon first glance.		The main menu has three long lists of settings, but the text is easy to read

Handling (7.35)

The shape and size of the HF G10 isn't much different than the Canon HF S21. It has a round shape and it is all lens up front (we're talking large lens). The hand strap is thick, padded, and one of the best in the business for a consumer camcorder. Canon usually does well in the hand strap department. The LCD is expansive and pristine and its flat design without a raised bezel is both stylish and functional. The touch-screen has a good fell to it—somewhat like an iPhone or iPod touch—although the touch-screen interface can still be frustrating when there are a lot of on-screen buttons displayed.

The HF G10 is big, but it feels good in your hand.		The control dial on the back is one of the G10's weaknesses in terms of handling.

The big difference with the G10 is its new lens ring, the accompaniment of a detachable lens hood, and a new control dial on the back of the camcorder. The lens ring is well-built and feels great, but it has one bothersome issue. Since the lens on the G10 doesn't jut out from the body of the camcorder, using the lens ring can result in your fingers bumping the edge of the LCD panel if it is open (particularly if it is tilted).

The large LCD displays video beautifully, and the camcorder has one of the better touch-screens on the market.

More of a problem is the poorly-designed control dial on the back of the camcorder. We don't like where it's placed and we don't like the roundabout way you have to set up controls to be manipulated by it. We wish Canon would have allowed the lens ring to control other functions in addition to focus, but that's not the case (the ring does focus only). Shutter speed, aperture, gain, and exposure can all be set with the rear-mounted control dial, but you must first select the manual options for these controls (other than exposure) in the G10's menu system. This means the dial cannot be used on the fly with the LCD panel closed. It's a confusing system, and it is probably something Canon could have simplified. Still, we like the amount of control the HF G10 offers—that is something we cannot ignore.

There's no built-in lens cover for the camcorder, but it comes with a large removable one.

The biggest advantage the HF G10 holds over other models in terms of handling is its customisability and control. The camcorder has two customisable buttons on the LCD panel, and you can adjust far more controls than you can on most consumer camcorders. The G10 has professional-grade tools like a waveform monitor, zebra stripes, and advanced audio controls as well. The method for adjusting said controls isn't always great, as we pointed out with the criticism of the control dial, but the fact that the HF G10 includes these options is a wonderful asset. This is a prosumer camcorder in a consumer cam body.

Stabilisation (TBA)

We're still chugging through the final steps of our stabilisation test, but we will have the results shortly. We'll update both this section and the HF G10's overall score when we finish the tests.  (More on how we test stabilisation.)
 

Portability (4.51)

The HF G10 is among the largest consumer camcorders on the market, and it weights about 590g fully loaded with its battery pack and lens hood. This is a good 70g heavier than the Canon HF S21 and over 100g heavier than the 2010 flagship models from Panasonic and Sony (see table below).

But... the HF G10 isn't meant to be a slip-in-your pocket toy-cam. It's designed to be a powerful camcorder loaded with pro-grade features. It has a giant lens, two memory card slots, a viewfinder, a big LCD, and lots of connectivity options. Even with all this, it is still far smaller than your average pro camcorder, yet it has nearly all the controls and features of a pro model.

Basically, the HF G10 is about as small as you can get for a camcorder loaded with as many features as it has. Sure, it's a good deal bigger than certain other flagship models (particularly Panasonics), but when you're choosing a high-end product sometimes a little bigger is better. The bulk of the HF G10 offers a sense of professionalism and sophistication in lieu of a more compact and lighter design.

	Canon HF G10	Canon HF S21	Panasonic HDC-TM700	Sony HDR-CX550V
Primary Media	32GB internal memory	64GB internal memory	32GB internal memory	64GB internal memory
Secondary Media	Dual SD/SDHC/SDXC memory card slots	Dual SD/SDHC memory card slots	SD/SDHC memory card	SD/SDHC/Memory Stick PRO Duo card slot
Weight	590g (with battery and lens hood)	520g (with battery)	440g (with battery)	480g (with battery)
Size	77 x 78 x 151mm	75 x 74 x 148mm	66 x 69 x138mm	66 x 74 x 143mm

Battery Life (5.7)

As far as flagship camcorders go, the Canon HF G10 did quite well in our battery life test. The camcorder lasted for 114 minutes of continual recording, which is more than a half hour longer than the Canon HF S21 lasted. We applaud this improvement by Canon, as the company went from one of the worst battery life performers (on its flagship model) in 2010, to one of the best. It's battery life wasn't hugely better than what Sony and Panasonic were capable of, but the improvement over the dismal 80-minute performance by the HF S21 is what impresses us. (More on how we test battery life.)

Battery Life Comparisons

The provided battery pack did well in our testing.

LCD & Viewfinder (12.54)

Canon didn't appear to change the LCD on the HF G10, as it is the same size and has the same resolution as last year's HF S21. Video looks great on the sizeable 3.5-inch screen, but we still had a bit of trouble with the touch-screen interface (despite the large surface area). This is more of a critique of Canon's menu system than anything else, and the fact that the HF G10 has a lot of on-screen buttons and menu options that you have to deal with using the touch-screen interface.

The 3.5-inch LCD is both stylish and functional.

On the back of the HF G10 is a small electronic viewfinder (EVF). The viewfinder has little in the way of an eyepiece, but it does have the ability to extend (about a half inch) from the camcorder and it has a dioptre adjustment slider. We found the viewfinder was difficult to lock in place after it was extended fully, which meant it was sliding around at times when we didn't want it to.

We wish the viewfinder would pivot up and down in addition to extending out from the camcorder.

	Canon HF G10	Canon HF S21	Panasonic HDC-TM700	Sony HDR-CX550V
LCD Size	3.5 inches	3.5 inches	3 inches	3.5 inches
LCD Resolution	922,00 pixels	922,00 pixels	230,400 pixels	921,000 pixels
Touch-screen	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Viewfinder	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Canon HF G10 Comparisons
Canon HF S21	Panasonic HDC-TM700	Sony HDR-CX550V