Top 8 budget camcorders under 25,000 rubles | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Smart­phones have almost com­plete­ly replaced ama­teur cam­eras. But so far, the video qual­i­ty of small gad­gets is infe­ri­or to full-fledged video cam­eras. For exam­ple, when shoot­ing with a smart­phone at dusk, notice­able noise and col­or dis­tor­tion appear. There­fore, to record video, many pre­fer to buy spe­cial equip­ment. You can choose a mod­el in any price range. We col­lect­ed the top of the bud­get video cam­eras up to 25,000 rubles, which deserve atten­tion.

Cam­eras for video shoot­ing are still pop­u­lar. Pho­to: prophotos-en.livejournal.com

What to look for when choos­ing

Pana­son­ic HC-V160

Canon Legria HF R86

JVC GZ-RX645

Sony HDR-CX405

Pana­son­ic HC-V260

ORDRO AC5

Sony HDR-PJ380E

Out­come

What to look for when choosing

one. Max­i­mum res­o­lu­tion. It depends on how high qual­i­ty the video will be. It is advis­able to buy equip­ment with this indi­ca­tor equal to 1,920 × 1,080 pix­els (Full HD) or 1,280 × 720 pix­els (HD).

2. Frame fre­quen­cy. The para­me­ter indi­cates the num­ber of frames that are tak­en in one peri­od of time. It is opti­mal to choose from 30 frames per sec­ond (the high­er the val­ue, the bet­ter).

3. Opti­cal zoom amount. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to zoom in on the part of the scene that is in the cam­er­a’s view. Typ­i­cal­ly, for non-pro­fes­sion­al cam­eras, this fig­ure is usu­al­ly 10–30.

four. Mem­o­ry size. Not all bud­get mod­els have built-in mem­o­ry. The main thing is to be able to install a mem­o­ry card from 32 GB. The more mem­o­ry, the more clips you can shoot.

5. Bat­tery capac­i­ty. This para­me­ter affects the dura­tion of the device on a sin­gle charge. The more capa­cious the bat­tery, the longer the cam­era will work with­out recharg­ing.

6. The weight. Sub­jec­tive, but impor­tant para­me­ter. You need to con­sid­er: who will shoot the video, how often. If this is a gad­get for the whole fam­i­ly or shoot­ing will be infre­quent, then you can choose the stan­dard option (250–350 g). And if the cam­era is bought for a teenag­er who will hold it in his hands all the time, then it is bet­ter to choose a lighter mod­el.

You need to choose a cam­era accord­ing to your needs. Weight, size, modes, bat­tery capac­i­ty, addi­tion­al func­tions depend on who, how often, in what con­di­tions will shoot. Pho­to: zshop.vn

Addi­tion­al­ly, you should pay atten­tion to the pres­ence of:

• shoot­ing func­tions in wide-angle mode. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fit more objects into the frame. For exam­ple, this will be need­ed when shoot­ing var­i­ous events where there are a lot of peo­ple, you need to cap­ture more par­tic­i­pants in the frame;
• man­u­al focus. Most mod­ern cam­eras are equipped with aut­o­fo­cus. But there are peo­ple who like man­u­al focus more, which is con­sid­ered more accu­rate;
• pho­to mode — an option­al but use­ful fea­ture that turns the cam­era into a cam­era for a while;
• night shoot­ing func­tion — allows you to shoot high-qual­i­ty video at night.

When buy­ing, it is impor­tant to under­stand that a bud­get device will not shoot as well as a pro­fes­sion­al cam­era. If you plan to seri­ous­ly engage in shoot­ing, it is bet­ter to con­sid­er more expen­sive mod­els.

But if you need a cam­corder to record ama­teur videos, you can find a suit­able option in this rat­ing. Anoth­er idea is to look for a suit­able option among action cam­eras. All prices in the top are valid at the time of writ­ing.

Panasonic HC-V160

Opens the rat­ing of video cam­eras for shoot­ing Pana­son­ic HC-V160. It is inex­pen­sive, com­pact (114x60x53 mm) and light (211 g). Suit­able as a first video cam­era for adults and teenagers. Of all the bud­get mod­els, there are sev­er­al advan­tages:

• 38x opti­cal zoom — use­ful when shoot­ing from a dis­tance;
• good record­ing qual­i­ty (1920x1080 Full HD);
• there is a built-in image sta­bi­liz­er — use­ful if you shoot “hand­held”.

Com­pact, light­weight Pana­son­ic HC-V160 cam­era. Pho­to: maiso.ru

The only sig­nif­i­cant draw­back is the small bat­tery capac­i­ty (970 mAh). But you can buy spare bat­ter­ies and change them if nec­es­sary.

Price — 13,950 rubles.

Canon Legria HF R86

The next in the top of inex­pen­sive cam­corders for shoot­ing video is the Canon Legria HF R86. This is a com­pact mod­el with a capa­cious bat­tery (2760 mAh), which shoots video in good qual­i­ty (1920x1080 Full HD). In addi­tion to the bat­tery capac­i­ty, it also dif­fers from the pre­vi­ous mod­el in the pres­ence of built-in mem­o­ry (16 GB). The cam­era has sev­er­al shoot­ing modes (slow, fast, with cin­e­mat­ic fil­ters).

The down­side is that there is no night mode. Because of this, in the absence of light­ing or with insuf­fi­cient light­ing, the qual­i­ty of the video will be poor.

The price is 20,480 rubles.

JVC GZ-RX645

A mod­el that occu­pies a well-deserved place in the top bud­get cam­corders. It has a good opti­cal zoom (40x), built-in mem­o­ry (8 GB). Its main dif­fer­ence from oth­er mod­els in this top is a very capa­cious bat­tery (3200 mAh). This is an excel­lent indi­ca­tor in the price cat­e­go­ry. This capac­i­ty is enough for 3–5 hours of work.

Anoth­er fea­ture of the cam­era is the pres­ence of Quad-Proof pro­tec­tion. This means that the cam­era has pro­tec­tion against:

• splash and water rat­ing IPX8 (can be ful­ly sub­merged in water to a depth of more than 1 meter);
• shocks, scratch­es, falls from a height of up to 1.5 meters;
• cold (down to ‑10 degrees) — the cam­era will not turn off on the street at the first cold snap;
• dust accord­ing to the IP5X stan­dard (this is par­tial pro­tec­tion, not com­plete tight­ness, but the amount of dust that will inter­fere with the oper­a­tion of the device will not get into the case).

The price is 21,179 rubles.

Sony HDR-CX405

In the rank­ing of the best cam­corders, there must be a com­pact (128x60x54 mm), light (215 g) mod­el with face recog­ni­tion. Thanks to Smile Shut­ter tech­nol­o­gy, auto­mat­ic face recog­ni­tion is pos­si­ble. But the user him­self can man­u­al­ly select the focus object.

A small cam­era that shoots video in excel­lent qual­i­ty. Pho­to: markaslaptop.com

Advan­tages of Sony HDR-CX405:

• intel­li­gent selec­tion of the oper­at­ing mode — the cam­era itself will choose the best option, tak­ing into account the exter­nal envi­ron­ment (there are 90 avail­able options);
• there is a built-in mem­o­ry (8 GB), SD, SDHC, SDXC cards are sup­port­ed;
• there is an opti­cal sta­bi­liz­er Opti­cal Steady Shot — the image will be clear­er, and shak­ing will be less notice­able;
• there is a wide-angle ZEISS Vario-Tes­sar lens — thanks to it you can shoot video in 720p, 1080p and 1080i;
• There is an HDMI out­put for sync­ing with your TV.

Price — 23,090 rubles.

Panasonic HC-V260

Pana­son­ic cam­corder takes pride of place in the rank­ing of the best bud­get mod­els. This com­pact device shoots good qual­i­ty video (1920x1080 Full HD), is equipped with an image sta­bi­liz­er (you can shoot video with­out shak­ing even “hand­held”). There is a large dis­play (2.7 inch­es), touch con­trol.

Pana­son­ic HC-V260 is one of the most pop­u­lar cam­eras in the bud­get seg­ment. Pho­to: frontend.vh.yandex.ru

An addi­tion­al plus is the option to take pic­tures while shoot­ing. Light weight (211 g), good opti­cal zoom (50x) and a fair­ly pow­er­ful bat­tery (1940 mAh) make this cam­era one of the best in our top.

Price — 23,335 rubles.

ORDRO AC5

The largest and heav­i­est cam­era from our top (435 g). The main dif­fer­ence from oth­er mod­els from the rat­ing is the frame rate. The rest have only one (50 or 60). In ORDRO AC5, the fre­quen­cy ranges from 24 to 120 frames per sec­ond. The fre­quen­cy depends on the select­ed shoot­ing qual­i­ty: 2880x2160 (24), 2560x1440 (30), 1920x1080 (60), 1080x720 (120), 640x480 (30). The max­i­mum shoot­ing res­o­lu­tion of the cam­era is 2880x2160.

Addi­tion­al fea­tures:

• face detec­tion and aut­o­fo­cus;
• auto white bal­ance + man­u­al adjust­ment;
• ener­gy sav­ing mode — auto­mat­ic shut­down when idle (option­al: after 3, 5, 10 min­utes);
• sup­port for mem­o­ry cards up to 128 GB;
• can be used for stream­ing (con­nects to PC).

Price — 23 390 rubles.

Sony HDR-PJ380E

Small (117x58x57 mm) and light (210 g) cam­era with 16 GB built-in mem­o­ry. With it, you can shoot high qual­i­ty video (Full HD 1080p). There are both auto­mat­ic and man­u­al focus­ing, expo­sure set­ting, white bal­ance. Many shoot­ing modes are avail­able, for exam­ple: por­trait, land­scape, sun­set, twi­light, fire­works.

Price — 24,500 rubles.

Outcome

We chose the key fea­tures of the described cam­eras, brought them togeth­er in one table.

The cam­eras from our top received the fol­low­ing rat­ings on a scale from 0 to 5:

The Pana­son­ic HC-V160 is a good option for a first cam­era. Small, com­pact, shoots in Full HD. But it is bet­ter to imme­di­ate­ly buy 1–2 replace­ment bat­ter­ies.

Canon Legria HF R86 is a cam­era with a capa­cious bat­tery, small, light, shoots video in Full HD, has built-in mem­o­ry. Not suit­able for shoot­ing at night and in very poor light­ing con­di­tions.

JVC GZ-RX645 is a cam­era with a very capa­cious bat­tery, 4 lev­els of pro­tec­tion against falls, mois­ture, dust and cold Quad-Proof. You can con­nect to it via Wi-Fi, there is a built-in LED back­light, it shoots video in Full HD. The best option for those who are look­ing for a good cam­era, but have a lim­it­ed bud­get.

Sony HDR-CX405 is a smart mod­el that itself will select the opti­mal shoot­ing mode depend­ing on exter­nal fac­tors, there is auto­mat­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion, aut­o­fo­cus. A good solu­tion if you need a video cam­era up to 25,000 rubles.

The Pana­son­ic HC-V260 is a small and com­pact cam­era with a long bat­tery life, auto­mat­ic image sta­bi­liza­tion and pho­to mode.

ORDRO AC5 is a dig­i­tal video cam­era with WiFi and the abil­i­ty to shoot video in 4K for­mat. One of the best cheap ama­teur cam­corders. There is a built-in image sta­bi­liz­er, pow­er sav­ing mode, aut­o­fo­cus and face detec­tion mode. The cam­era is heavy — this is worth con­sid­er­ing if choos­ing a cam­era for a teenag­er.

The Sony HDR-PJ380E is a com­pact, light­weight mid-range cam­era. You can shoot video in Full HD, there are many shoot­ing modes.