Minolta MN4K25NV UHD 4K IR Night Vision Camcorder (Blue)

Re-Branded Generic Camera, Not Minolta.

A company called Elite Brands bought the rights to use the name Minolta and started putting it on generic, poor quality cameras. This particular camera has a fixed lens with fixed focus. It claims to be 4K but it is actually 2880x2160 and even imports into Davinci Resolve in a 4x3 format and has to be stretched out. Detail is WAY below what should be expected for a 4K camera. There is so much noise reduction, contrast boost and digital sharpening that the video looks cartoonish. It is full of artifacts and all the fine detail is smeared away. There is no optical zoom, only digital. It claims 16X, but that's a lie. I would guess it's more like 4X, but even that just shows all the sharpening artifacts and amplifies what a blurry mess the image is. There is no image stabilization. It claims to have anti-shake but it does nothing. There is also very noticeable rolling shutter, making handheld footage shaky and full of rolling shutter jello. Color is inconsistent and terrible. There are times it almost looks okay, then the white balance will adjust and it will look so cold and red/magenta that it looks like you're on an alien planet. Sometimes the alternate white balance modes help a bit, but usually not. Dynamic range is just about the worst I've ever seen. It exposes just a bit dark and absolutely crushes the shadows. Turning up the exposure compensation blows out the highlights. Audio is really poor. It ramps up and down from too quiet to literally clipping. There is an audio input jack but the problem is even worse there. There is also no plug in power, so it only works with powered mics. There is no way to see or adjust the audio levels either. All audio is recorded to a single, mono track at 32Khz. It came with a no-name SD card that failed almost immediately. Also, the camera only works with 32GB and lower cards. Cards 64GB or larger will not work. It has an IR mode, but the sensitivity is so low that even on a moonlit night when I can see really well with the naked eye, the IR mode will show a totally black image. In fact, the max ISO is 400, so even normal low-light situations result in an unusably dark image. Basically, this is a cheap, generic camcorder with the Minolta name slapped on it. The build quality, image quality, and audio quality is poor. What's more, it has the same false claims about resolution and non-working features like anti-shake that all those generic cameras on Amazon/eBay have. It doesn't deserve to be on a respectable site like B&H.