Review on ViewSonic 3DV5 Pocket 3D HD Camcorder featuring 5M FF Lens (No Longer Manufactured) by Chris Tisdale

I am re-writing my review after a few days of using this 3D camera. I don't have a 3D monitor or TV so I can only comment on how the resulting videos/photos appear on my 2D screens (comes with software and a stereoscopic player). The first reaction was that it's a good enough "cheap" 3D camera, but for 3D videos it's not really great as is. The blocky, low-resolution look spoils the otherwise good 3D effect. I find the 3D photos passable due to the simple 3D look that I've only ever done with a special lens attachment on a single-lens camera. pair and then combine. Overall, this 2D/3D camcorder/camera is very similar to a camera phone, although it probably outperforms my current 2MP camera phone in image quality. Sometimes the exposure is correct and sometimes not, extremely bright or dark conditions cannot be achieved correctly. If you use a camera phone for videos/photos, you know what to expect from this 3D camcorder. This is the quality of a 3D video that when viewed in HD 16:9 aspect ratio (no horizontal compression) shows how awful the picture is. If the video quality matched the photo quality, this would be a decent camera for the price, and yet at only $129 I can't say it's that bad. Despite being the twin of the Aiptek i2, I prefer the ViewSonic and its 3D media capabilities despite the lack thereof. I convert 3D photos into a squint and scale them with a graphics editor, so that's enough for me. I'm pretty sure 3D enthusiasts won't like these cameras unless they want something like their camera phone to be 3D and carry them around all the time. I hope that a firmware update can improve the quality of the video to the level of still images, otherwise this camera is not suitable for viewing on 3DTV. Also, 2D is probably less good to say as it doesn't get any better than 3D, leading me to consider it the worst. Battery charging is another issue to deal with. So far I have noticed that it takes about 4 times longer to fully charge than is used. This means it has been connected to the USB for a long time, but this has not become a real problem for me so far. If you are lucky there will be enough time to use it. I'm curious why 5 megapixel sensors can't offer better resolution or image quality since they aren't tiny lenses. At least I like to try 3D. an easy way and it's not too expensive as long as I wait before buying a 3D TV. Unfortunately, this camera can be novelty at best if ViewSonic doesn't improve video playback (again, I can't tell unless I'm looking at a 2D screen).