Video Camera Review: JVC Picsio GC-FM1- HD home movies in your pocket

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 09 February 2010 11:03

Sometimes you just want to have a single button device to capture your holiday fun.  Designed for ease of use, simple youtube upload and pocket sized, the JVC Picsio GC-FM1 is part of an increasingly crowded 1080p HD pocket video camera market.

My father spent a great deal of our family holidays behind his super 8 video camera, and did not truly enjoy the experience until ‘family movie night’ a few months later, after the film had been developed and the projector set-up.

Until recently this scenario has not changed much in the intervening years, at popular holiday locations around the globe, parents can still be seen struggling with batteries, tapes, hard drive space, memory cards, lighting, focus, formats, camera bags and so on.  For some folks this is fun and there is a conscious effort to capture our holiday/kid growing up/sports moments with as much quality as possible.

But up steps a new generation of video capture tools, devices that are compact and light enough to quickly throw in your pocket, but also pack a high definition punch for a broad base of uses. 

Companies such as Flip, Kodak and, the one we are looking at today JVC, all have devices competing in this market, Sony has recently announced a revamped device called the Bloggie that also enters this retail space.

These cameras all do the job of capturing MP4 format video ready for posting on Youtube or Facebook, and record to SDHC memory.

The JVC Picsio GC-FM1, outshines its competitors in looks, I took the black one for a run, but there are a couple more colours in the range.  Whatever the colour, all are finished in multi-faceted glistening gloss and edged by bevelled silver for the all important wow factor when produced in a crowd.



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