jbach36's Full Review: Gateway Pocket DV-S20 Digital Camera
Hello again, I see they finally added this Digicam to the list, I purchased one right after Christmas and have been playing with it since, it is a very well thought out camera, and has very nice video for the price.
I found out about this camera on Tech TV, they did a comparison of 3 digital camcorders (no tapes used), there was one by fisher, and a new one by panasonic, and this Gateway. All seemed nice, very nice screens, tiny, easily pocketable, and all 3 recorded video using MPEG4, making them for good for making videos for on the internet.
they liked the Panasonic and Fisher better (said the Gateway had jerky video in comparison) and compaired the Fishers 3 MP stills with auto focus to the gateway's 2 MP and preset focus (kinda glossing over the fact that the Panasonic only did .3 mp (640x480))
They also mentioned the price difference, the Panasonic was $999.99, the Fisher was $899.98, and the Gateway was only $199.98. QUITE a huge difference in price I'd say.
Now on to the DV-S20, it is a nice small camera, laid out like a tiny camcorder. It has a swing out screen that also can pivot around about 270 degrees (making it useful for shots where you have to reach above a crowd, or adjust for glare on the screen. It also has a flash, for still shots. The camera comes with 64 Meg ram built in, and can take SD cards (and MMC I think also) up to 512 MB, giving you about 40 min of video in it's high quality setting (320x240 at 22-25 fps,progressive scan), with the built in 64 Meg you get about 5 min of high quality video, or about 90 1600x1200 photos (there are three quality settings for both video and photos (and 2 resoultion modes for photos, 1600x1200, and 800x600), at the lowest quality settings, you get 17 min of video, and 183 photos in 1600x1200 (732 in 800x600 mode)so you see it has some flexability.
Picture quality is acceptable, given you take the pics beyond the minimum distance(1.2 m to infinity).
The camera also has 2.5x digital zoom, but this only works in video mode, you can zoom before taking a photo, but when you take the pic, it will come out unzoomed, this is a drawback in my opinion, if you are gonna have it, let us use it in both modes Gateway.
Now on to some pluses of the cam
we have ease of use, I was playing with it in the store without the manual, was easy to figure out
the pivoting screen, I LOVE this feature, makes it much more flexable that my Aiptek DV2 (that this cam may be replacing).
It has a FLASH!, most of these cams don't!, helps in capturing some pics you might otherwise miss.
It is convienent, it's small size makes it easy to take with you.
It's not bad on batteries, assuming you use either 2 NiMH rechargables, AA Lithium, or 1 CR-V3 type battery, I have had a set of AA Lithium's in there about 2 weeks now, constant use, and they are still going, though the battery use display is showing it's almost time to change them
The images and videos are very good, not perfect (nor do the photos compare to what a normal good quality 2 mp cam will take, though it is better than some I have seen (some of the older 2 mp cams had auto focus or optical zoom (this has neither), then again, those older 2 mp cams don't do video as nice lol.
One other thing it has is a good ammount of manual controls, for example, you have auto or manual settings for white balance (for manual you get Daylight,Shade,Fluorescent1 and 2, and Lamp, you also get to adjust exposure settings (+- 1.8) and ISO settings (film speed) (you get Auto, 100,200,400)
Now for some minuses...
it has a preset focus for the lens, it has no close up mode (or Macro)and anything you take a pic or video of has to be at least 1.2M away (unless you like out of focus photos).
Another thing is that the Digital zoom of 2.5x only works in Video mode, not a major problem, but would be nice to have access to the digital zoom in Still mode also
They also could have included some way to focus the lens (even a manual adjustment would be better)
Aside from these gripes, I am very happy with my camera (it also helps that, while it cost $199.98, there was a $100.00 rebate (if you bought the 40 dollar accesory kit at the same time, which gives you a case, mini tripod, 2 NiMH AA batteries and wall charger, and a AC adapter for the camera (so you don't run the batteries down transfering your pics and videos to the computer), so the camera only cost me $100.00. Not a bad deal really.
Digital camcorder and camera in one Tapeless MPEG-4 video format Capture up to 18 minutes of video or 700 still pictures to the 64MB internal memory S...More at Amazon Marketplace
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.