It’s hard to beat the convenience and recording times of hard drive based cameras. By the same token though, we’ve never seen one that nails convenience, image quality and flexibility at the same time. Recently, Sony came close with the HDR-SR1, but it fell down in the convenience stakes. Continuing this trend, the Toshiba Gigashot also falls down, but this time in the image quality and comfort stakes.

The Gigashot uses an internal 60GB hard drive, which is enough for over 13 hours of footage in its highest quality setting. There’s also an SD slot for some flexibility and to provide a shockproof recording medium. At its highest quality setting, it records interlaced 720 x 480 video at 9Mbps, whereas the lowest quality setting will get you 55 hours of recording time. You also get to take good quality 2 megapixel stills to either the SD slot or the hard drive.

The Gigashot simply feels too much like a glorified camera phone. Even though it is capable of taking some passable images under strict manual supervision, it unfortunately can’t keep up with other hard-drive based video cameras when it comes to automatic use.

The sound can be quite good when you are up close to your subject; however once you move into close range the automatic focus has a mild heart attack and blurs the image, regardless of the metering mode you select. When wrangling with the manual controls, you can set the focal distance from 0.1 meters to 3.4 meters or select between macro or infinite focal length; however the automatic focus won’t work unless you’re more than 30 centimetres away from your subject.

As the autofocus jitters, tracks and misses its mark, the automatic iris swings the image from bright to dark constantly. Things get better when there’s no movement in the frame, where a dark image -- with desaturated greens and over-saturated reds; even in ‘Vivid’ colour mode -- is complemented with a lot of noise. If image quality isn’t at the top of your list of priorities, the Gigashot will produce satisfactory static shots. For anything involving movement though, it’s just unacceptable. Even for the relatively low price and huge capacity.

AV out and power jacks are hidden underneath a plastic flap up the top and towards the back of the camera. These are also provided on a docking station, along with a LAN port and USB connector. The LAN port is only supported by Toshiba DVD recorders with Net Dubbing, so you’ll end up using the USB port and a PC to access the MPEG2 clips from the camera.

The best part of the camera is its menu system, which is clear, concise and entirely thumb driven through a 5-way rocker switch and jog wheel. When you switch to playback mode, the zoom controller shows you a series of thumbnails that will start playing back as you scroll through them. Despite the animations, it’s slick and effective; without ever being intrusive.

Unfortunately a good menu system does not maketh a good camera. Even though the battery life is quite good and the button layout is superb, the image quality leaves a lot to be desired.