5K Video Camera Camcorder, 48MP Vlogging Camera for YouTube 3X Optical Digital Zoom Recorder Cameras for Photography Vlog Camera with Microphone, Stabilizer, Remote Control, 2 Batteries (Black)

This is a perfect video camera. It offers all the quality and features of one that is many times this price. The sound is surprisingly good. I covered a memorial service for some friends, but the facility had very poor sound quality, but this camera's own mic picked the speaker up very well. Assuming you are not a snob this camera will work as good as any other. If you are a bit of a snob, then spend a bob or two more and get all the light covers and other gadgets on the same camera. This can't be beat.

The optical zoom works as advertised, but since the camera starts off with a fairly wide view angle, the 10X optical zoom does not give you much telephoto capability. However, the 5K image quality is so good that in the 5K mode, the 16X Digital zoom on top of the optical zoom is very useable up to about 8X. But at lower resolutions, the quality of the digial zoom degradates much sooner. It does record audio in 2-channel stereo which its 4K predecessor only recorded in 1-channel mono. The large lens hood supplied with the camera does not fit. It is the same lens hood as for the 4K version, but will not adapt to the different style Zoom lens used on this 5K unit. Big oversight on the part of the seller. It comes with two batteries which are the same size/voltage as the 4K camera but does not come with an external charger as the 4K does. You have to charge the battery while on the camera with the supplied charging cord. This makes it impossible to charge the second battery while recording with the first battery. Fortunately, since I own 2 of the 4K camera systems, their batteries and external chargers are totally interchangable. I do have an ongoing problem with all of these 4K, 5K & 8K similar camcorder type cameras in that they all format their SD cards in exFAT which splits up the recorded video files into 3.72GB each which at 5K resolution provides only a few minutes of video per file. When played back on the camcorder, all files playback seamlessly. However, when importing into any video editing software, you have to stitch together the multiple files, which sometimes causes sync problems if combining your final video with multiple camera files, as I do. Don't know why they can't change the firmware in the menu software to allow choosing formatting in FAT 32, exFAT or NTFS, which would allow writing unlimited length uninterrupted files. Basically, for the money charged, it is a good deal. Dropped to 4 stars because of the lens hood issue and no external battery charger as provided standard with the less expensive 4K model. But the camera itself performes very well, so far.

Advertised as 10X optical zoom but is only 3X optical zoom. The 10X zoom is optical & digital zoom combined. That's the least of the issues I have with it though. The biggest failures are it's file length limit & video quality. As some other reviews mentioned the file length is limited do to it's Fat32 sd card formatting, limiting 4K recording time length per file to a little over 13 minutes, so longer recording time will be split to multiple files. I had hoped these split files could be rejoined in post editing but no dice. There is a gap of missing video & audio between end & start of adjoining files as you can see in the demonstration video I made to show this where half way through you see the video & hear the audio skip ahead at the splice point. Also video quality at HD 1080p is more like 720p & at 4K is barely acceptable as HD quality. I think my Moto G4 phone at 1080p looks as good or better than this thing at 4K. Doubt it's actually 4K, more like some interpolated 4K & a low quality low bitrate MP4 encoding. Sent it back.

I bought two of this camera for recording live shows. When dialed in properly for a stage lighting setup, the video is actually pretty good. The audio is where it really suffers, the built in mic is useless and the stereo mic that's included has to be charged separately, turned on separately, and only nominally improves the final output. I decided to test out why it might be happening, and I think one of the stereo channels is just thoroughly lackluster. I tried plugging in the camera receiver for a set of Maono T5 wireless mics set to stereo, so that each lavalier was recording mono L or R. In the final recording, one channel came in loud and clear and the second channel was almost inaudible. This happened with both cameras. Plugged into my computer, the mics behave as expected for recording stereo audio. Overall, if you have a way to record your audio separately, I can recommend this camera as a decent starter for stable recording.

Do not let the size of this video camera fool you. It can take some incredible footage and photos! This is a perfect package if you are starting a podcast or just want to shot a film. I am going to order a second one.