AGFAPHOTO DV-5000G COMPACT DIGITAL CAMCORDER

Sporting a five megapixel resolution CMOS sensor, AgfaPhoto’s new DV-5000G compact camcorder seems to be caught in the highly competitive middle ground between the likes of the Flip Camcorder, Sony’s Net Sharing Camcorder and compact, heavy weight hitters such as Sanyo’s Xacti HD – can the fact that this camcorder also serves as a portable games console serve to distinguish it from the competition?

From our perspective at least, we cannot help but wonder quite where AgfaPhoto are coming from. On paper it may sound like a good idea to integrate games console capabilities (focused around 20 classic games such as Tetris and Black Jack) into a compact digital camcorder but, in reality, we would much have preferred AgfaPhoto to have focused on this device’s capabilities as a camcorder – such as taking a leaf out of the Flip’s book and making video transfer to YouTube a breeze.

And, again, on paper it may have seemed like a good idea to include MP3 and AVI player capabilities but, let’s be honest here, you more than probably already have a dedicated PMP (or, at the very least, an MP3 player) so why would you want a compact camcorder to offer this functionality?

In fairness, however, not withstanding the rather curious and wholly supplemental abilities detailed above, the AgfaPhoto DV-5000G is not a bad compact camcorder, it’s just that it’s not especially inspiring either – or, to put it more succinctly, as far as we are concerned, it seemingly lacks that all important ‘wow’ factor.

Based on a five megapixel CMOS sensor which is capable of bolstering its resolution to 11 megapixels with interpolation, AgfaPhoto’s DV-5000G can also serve as a stills camera and, oddly, a movement sensing webcam, and offers a not especially impressive 8X digital zoom, 720 x 480 resolution video capture in either D1 or VGA formats and a fold out 3” 960 x 240 LCD display with storage provided courtesy of 64MB of internal memory which can be supplemented with SD or SDHC memory cards.

Due to be released later this year – though,at the time of writing, an exact release date has not been specified – AgfaPhoto’s DV-5000G Compact Digital will retail for around $26