Customer Ratings & Reviews

I got a great deal on this camera. We have an old high-8 Sony camcorder, and 2 identical Samsung SCD6040 camcorders. Since our new baby was starting to really exhibit some new milestones, we whipped out the cameras to record them. The two Samsungs were no longer working. One would record sound, but no video and the other wouldn't stay on long enough to record anything. So I went to the store to see what they had. They had 2 of these cameras left as open box deals. I decided to buy one as it was marked down considerably, but would still have the warranty. I got it home, and immediately started reading the Quick Start guide. And realized that the A/C charger cord was not in box. I called Best Buy and they pulled the one from their demo model so that I could have it. I went back, picked it up, charged my little camcorder, and proceeded to take video that was better quality that our two prior Samsungs. It is VERY easy to use and the software is pretty decent and has some neat features. My only 3 issues (and they are fairly minor) are that there is no night capabilities (our old Samsungs had this), there is no date/time stamp on the actual footage (it shows up on the screen during recording and playback on the camcorder, but once the video is tranferred to a computer you can only find the date/time it was taken by looking into the properties of the clip. So if they are burned to DVD, it would be diffiult to know), and it blurs sometimes with automatic focus. But, even with those issues, this camera is still amazing for the amount of money that was paid. Excellent camera. I would absolutely recommend this to any of my family/friends.

Overall the Samsung is a decent little SD card camcorder, with a lot more features and much better battery life than comparable devices in the same price range. With a 34X optical zoom and 3+ hour battery life, it leaps ahead of the others in those areas. It's also extremely easy to use, and you can view the videos right out of the camera without having to use proprietary software just to watch them. My only gripe is perhaps the overall video quality. Without getting too technical, the chip in the Samsung captures video in such a way that when you pan the camera around or something moves in the frame, the edges have a jagged "torn" look to them. This "tearing effect" is distracting, but does minimize or disappear if you take video of something that is relatively stationary. This isn't unique to the Samsung - other SD camcorders from Panasonic and other makers suffer from the same effect. It's not a defect, just the way the sensor chip captures the video (hence the "built to a price" comment). In other words, the video output is great for online use, but full-sized viewing on a TV to me anyway, is a bit irritating. In this respect, the "Flip Video" devices actually produce cleaner and smoother video, but the Samsung offers a lot more features overall. For around $200, the features outweight most of the video quality issues. I'd recommend this so long as folks are aware of the limitations.

Primarily got it for stop motion tests. Decent camera, works well with Dazzle USB video capture. Was dissapointed that the USB only works as a card reader and I couldn't hook it up directly to the computer, but not a big deal. Has manual everything, even shutter and white balance. While you cant use as a still camera you can use the time-lapse feature for stills. Buttons are a little stiff and it's easy to subtly move the camera if you're adjusting on the fly. Card and battery door a little inconvenient as it is on the bottom so you have to take it off the tripod or the tripod shoe to change. Encodes using a funny codec but software that comes with it can convert if you don't have Quicktime pro or something more sophisticated. Great first camera for budding backyard filmmakers that have their own editing and compositing software. Videos are interlaced so if you want progressive scan you'll have to convert the video using 3rd party software.

I got this camera this weekend for my trip to England. So far I really like this little guy. The picture quality is good and it records directly to .mp4 with the H.264 codec. The software lets you load your movies directly to youtube which is kinda cool. I have found that if you want to edit the footage with anything other than the included PC software you need to convert it to an AVI or MOV Quicktime Pro works great for this. Once you convert the video you can edit on PC or Mac without much problem. If you want a consumer level camcorder with decent quality that records to standard SD cards you can't go wrong with this one.

I've owned this camera for a couple of weeks now, so I figured it was time to give her a review. Love the lightweight and small size and nice sized screen. Image stabilization works fine and has nice zoom. This thing isn't the greatest for night filming mainly because it doesn't have an external light, but for the price, you can't argue. The internal microphone is far beyond what I was expecting. I took this to a concert and expected the sound to be nothing but buzzes, but it actually came through as clear as I heard it in person. The video quality is great, it isn't HD, but its good. For those complaining of the tearing effect: I haven't noticed anything of the sort, except for when I play my videos with QuickTime player, and thats normal due to the way mpg4 files are played on QuickTime. If you convert your clips to wmv or avi they look great and have no tearing whatsoever. All around a very good camera that excels in almost every situation other than nighttime shooting. I would absolutely replace this if it were lost or stolen.

We bought this camera to have a small camera that was easy to bring along with us. This camera is better than the cheaper flash cameras as most those cameras have 3-5x zoom and this has 34x zoom which is very nice for outside use. Overall this is a great camera for someone who just wants to capture a few moments and is not a video buff.

The only problem I had with this camcorder was that the videos formatted to 3GP, which isn't compatible with Windows Movie Maker. I tried using a file converter to make it AVI, but on both tries, the picture came out bad, slurring the images together every time I moved the camcorder. Aside from that, it's a good camera.

I bought this camera after reading many good reviews about it. I received it and began making test videos right away. It was so easy to operate I figured no worries when I went to interview my husband's 95 year old grandmother with it. Wrong. After about 15 test videos that went perfectly well, the one I bought the camera for gave me a message stating: unsupported format. Three hours of video were useless to me. I could not download and convert the file, I could not do anything with the file at all. I called Samsung tech support to find out what happened, the tech said I should have formatted the card before I used it. I have used many types of cards in our cameras with no problems so the thought never ocurred to me to format it first. I thought this was pretty lame tech support. However, I formatted the card and ran another bunch of test videos. About the 16th one, I got the same error message. I brought the camera back and as I was at the end of my 14 day return period, I felt I needed to return the product. If I had a few more days, I would have tried to replace the card first. As it is, I can't say it was the card or the camera that had the technical problem.

I think this is a great comcorder. I just bought it, but I had one problem, it is not compatible to Movie Maker. However it is good for posting videos on Youtube, which I do. Overall it is a nice camcorder.

i like it but, its more for watching your kids grow up not for buisness, however this its a good first camera, if your into videography. ( also it is idiot proof )

Great, used for xmas, couldn't be happier. Awesome keeping up with 2 yr old. Very compact, easy to store and carry. Beautiful picture even on 42' tv.

I got this for youtube and it works great, it blurrs a little in very low light. Batter life is amazing and very easy to use.

Besides a bit dark in low light areas, I caught it on sale so for the price, I Love it.

Overall, I am very satisfied. Very good quality and easy to use for a novice like myself. The only drawback is that it does not work with Windows Media Player. However, I was able to download Quick Time player for free and was ready to go from that point. Easy YouTube upload with software.

pretty fun camera blurs a little sometimes but for the most part its not too bad got the warranty and an 8 gig memory card all for under $300. Not too bad since I was expecting to pay at least $350.

Returned a cheap HD camcorder and replaced it with this stylish Samsung. The standard definition picture is better than the HD one I returned.

I bought this camera for my girlfriend for Christmas and I have regretted it ever since. The first night we tried to record something, we put it on the computer to watch it and the audio was out of sync. The quality of the video is also bad. The second time she used it on Christmas eve, after about a half hour of recording. a message came up saying "Format Card" Doing that would erase the files. So we tried to put them on the computer and it said the device was unreadable. This could be a card problem but I hear that these cards can have a lot of problems as well. Out of the 3 times this camera was used, only once did it work have descent. This camera has caused me nothing but trouble. I'll be returning it real soon.

I bought this camera after wanting one for years. I was really excited to get home and film my two children (3 yrs and 8 months old). I was so disappointed to constantly have a orange haze on the pictures. I am really upset, I missed filming my daughter stand up for the first time and my son interact with her. I would NOT recommend this camera to anyone.