Having used this camera for appprox. 3 months I have had little occasion to use it for any other tasks than as a video camera.
I like to carry it with me at all times due to it's small size.
Overall, as an occasional user, I consider the Mustek DV4000 good value for money. Although some of the printed data may look very promising, please, do not expect the video resolution associated with some of the more expensive cameras. I found that the image quality does not just depend on the number of pixels, but on many other things (quality of the lens etc).

Posititive Qualities:
The Camera provides fairly good results on high resolution,- providing you are happy to put up with the high res. setting at 10fps as this tends to accelerates the speed of people walking or driving by.
The low light setting is helpful for indoor takes, even though the resolution is impaired.
The AEL Setting can be very userful for situations with exteme contrast, to select the area that should be correctly exposed.
The quality of the sound is remarkably true to reality.
I found the digital zoom to be very useful,- on the high res. setting,- however not beyond zoom ratio 1:2 (or there about)
The Sound Setting has shown itselve to be remarkable sensitive,-rather better than some of the analogue systems tried on other models.

Negative Qualities:
I did not consider the lower and medium resulution settings very useful,--the image quality was sadly lacking, (not what you might expect from a moder digital camera),- even though there may be benefits for imaging on computer screens. The 30fps for the low reolution settings are certainly a bonus when it comes to showing up movements.
When it comes to the performance of a still camera I am not convinced even though the results are acceptable;- my Olympus C300 Zoom gives better results.
The absence of optical zoom is a disadvantage,- a digital zoom can never make up fot this.

Recommendation: Select a flash card of adequate capacity, as the one supplies will not be adequate. Using a 128mb card, the high resolution video capacity of my camera provides approx 25 min.videotime.
For taking videos indoors during nightime, please ensure adequate lighting so that you don't have to go into to low light level mode.


Badly Needs a Flash, but otherwise Great Value   September 7, 2004
 88 out of 89 found this review helpful

If you're looking for a "do it all" digital camera, and you're on a budget, this is outstanding. On the other hand, if you need, or demand superb quality prints this is not for you.
The package includes a still zoomable camera (up to 4 megapixel) Digital Camcorder, Voice recorder, and MP3 player, and is a nice, well made all round package. As others have said, it badly needs a flash system, to help with both the photo, and video functions, but otherwise, it's neat, and a great converation piece, Smaller than a packet of cigarettes, it's a good improvement on the 3000 model that preceded it for a couple of reasons, and worth the extra $40 or so.
It has a rechargable battery, mini tripod, 32MB SD card, carry case, USB lead, S3 lead and mains adapter. I purchased a 256MB SD card for around $50 which gives about an hour of video on highest resolution, and more than enough photo's, even at the highest 4meg setting. On the down side, YOU NEED MORE LIGHT. if you're taking video or photo's indoors, the ambient light makes the resolution suffer, especially on zoom, or even different macro settings. My handy tip on playback for the video is to set your computer media player to 640x480 max resolution, or you'll see a blocky pixel finish. The MP3 repro isn't bad, and probably comparable with cheaper players, but not wonderful, and the voice recorder is more of a toy than anything else. All that said, overall, I thought it was well worth the money, and have been very happy with it, for it's portability and multi functions. Considering that most digital video cameras will cost you at least 2.5 to 5 times as much, this isn't a bad investment. I am a little worried that the integral touch pad and on/off switch may not stand up to too much abuse, but otherwise I recommend this wholeheartedly. Just remember before you buy that there is a lot of truth in the saying "you get what you pay for" so it's good, but not great.


Seemed Nifty, but Mine Does Not Work...At All   November 9, 2003
 36 out of 49 found this review helpful

I really liked the idea of this camera, and it has more features and better resolution than its competition (Gateway, Aiptek, etc.). I was absolutely shocked when I received it by how small it is. I guess I still expected it to be the size of a palmcorder, but it literally is the size of a credit card. Amazing!

However, after initially plugging the unit in to charge the battery for about 1.5 hours (the instructions do not tell you how long to charge it), I turned it on (the instructions do say that you can use the camera while it is charging) to mess around with it and test it out. The camera and battery were VERY hot -- uncomfortably hot -- wrong type of hot. Anyway, the camera still turned on and I recorded about 20 seconds of video and two pictures, but then the camera just shut down. It was still plugged in and the charge light was on. I was able to get it turn back on by pressing the power button and then the shutter button (?!), but when I tried to take another picture, it shut down again and will not come back on.

I have an email in to Mustek Tech Support, but I am probably just going to send this back to HSN.com and call it quits. This seems like it would be a fun product, but as with a lot of Mustek products, the quality control is substandard to the competition. I will probably try the Gateway DV camera instead. It does not offer MP3 functions or hardware enhancement to 4.0 megapixels, but it does offer a flash for the still shots (something lacking in the Mustek products), runs off of AA batteries (so no proprietary battery to charge, which is obviously a problem), and being a Gateway will probably be built better (at least I am hoping).

I am disappointed in this product and do not recommend it.


Awsome   May 15, 2004
 25 out of 26 found this review helpful

I just got this camera a few days ago, and i have been using it almost every second of those few days. I'm a 15 year old skateboarding metal head. And I use this camera to take videos of my friends and I skateboarding at our local spots, and to listen to my heavy metal at school. This camera is the one of the best choices I have made, ever. When I received the camera i was ecstatic about it. I charged it up, while i wated i did my math homework whitch i almost never do, it only took about and hour to fully charge up, then i went out and skated, and tested it out. I took three short clips of my friends, and then when home and figured out how to use the editing programs. In the near future I plan to use this camera to make a video of all my skateboarding friends and me and put it on a disk.

What I like about this camera:
Just about every thing...
The battery lasts me about 40 to 50 munites on a full charge...
The video is moderate, it's not the best (mainly because that's not what I paid for) and it's not the worst...
The MP3 is great, good for listening to during class(scince it's the end of the year on we done do anything in class anyway)
the voice recorder is good if what your recording is like 3 feet away...

The things I think they could add to it to make it better:
An adjustable velcro srap would make it a little easyer, and make me feel more secure when i am holding the miniscule camera....
I think they should raise the price and include a 256MB card instead of a 32MB, the 32MB gets 10 minutes on economic resolition and around 6 on normal and high, (I am yet to buy a 256MB card).

I havent taken any pictures with it thus far, but im willing to bet that it is similar to the video.

If your one of those AV freaks and your looking for a great performance from this...that's not what your going to get....it gets the job done nothing special, if you want a great camera go buy a $500 camera, if you just want something to mess around with...Here you go.

Thanks for taking the time to read my review...hope it was helpful to you....and mustek is probably thanking you fro considering buying it(more thankfull if you buy it )


Not bad for a tiny camcorder with this price   December 18, 2003
 23 out of 23 found this review helpful

So far I'm pleased with the purchase, and I plan to keep it for a while. Pros and cons listed below:

Pros:
-Low price. Its only around $150 while the other top brand will cost you more $$$.
-Small size. It fits in your palm and easily in any pocket
-Looks good. The appearance of this little unit looks high tech.
-Mp3 player is nice. While don't expect top quality speakers, the sound output from the external speaker is acceptable, and you can also use head phones. 512MB sd card can hold quite a few songs.
-Video quality is decent. With resolution of 352 x 288, it runs at 30 frames per second. This is the highest for the current tapeless camcorders around this price range today.
-Battery life is good. One charge seems to last a whole day.
-Easy to view. Simply plug into tv and you can watch your videos or pictures

Cons:
-Poor still shots. Under the camera mode, the still shots at 2 or 4 mega pixels are not very sharp. When comparing shots taken from my canon s300, there's huge difference.
-No flash and needs light. Video and pictures will need external light or else it'll be dark.
-Digital zoom is not very useful. Because every time I try to zzom, the picture quality seems to suffer.
-Video at 640x480 is not very good, because its only 10 frames per second. So it's better to stick with the lower resolution at 30 frames per second.

I haven't mess around with the software that it came with, but I can just plug it into the pc and it shows up as an external drive, so I can just drag and drop the files. I'm a fan of pocket size gadgets, and I plan to keep the DV 4000 for a few months until maybe the Samsung ITCAM7 with 1.5 GB HD comes out. The gap between camcorder and digital camera is narrowing, and it's just matter of time a true all-in-one unit will appear on the market.

The bottom line is if you need to get high quality pictures or videos, you probably will need to fork out a bit more money to get something else. But if you are like me, just want the convenience of carrying a light weight camcorder in your pocket, this unit will do the job.