Well where do I begin? After a month of use, the battery stopped working. Contacted Canon via email. They replied battery is not under warranty. Would you like to buy another one? Please.

6 months later. I started transferring video to my computer only to find out this stupid camera eats tapes. I have lost two tapes so far. One of them was my son's birth!!!!

The eating tapes issue is a major problem with this unit. They have known about it and continue to ignore it. Do a search on "zr40 tape problems" to see what I am talking about. There are even more results on sister product, zr10. I will never buy a product from Canon again. They are idiots for doing this to their customers.

I bought this model 18 months ago. Now it has big problem. I can't rewind the tape well. "remove the tape" mesasge always pop up. I sent it back to Canon for repair. They asked me $169 for repair. What can I say now? Too bad camcorder.

After about a year of use, ZR 40 started eating tapes. Do a google search on the topic, there are hundreds of people with the same problem. 'Remove Cassette' and 'Eject' (use those as keywords combined with 'Canon ZR' to view message boards postings) will appear on the screen, and that's the end of the toy.

Excellent camcorder, does very well in all kinds of light. I have had no trouble with it indoors, and I find that it performs very well in low light. Flawlessly performs with Windows Movie Maker 2 through firewire. The sound is outstanding, considering the picture is it's strong point. I did not need the digital camera built in as I already have one. Effects are fun to play around with, especially with the handy scroll button. I have not heard the motor noise at all, so I can't see where that is coming from. My only complaint is that it shuts off too quickly if inactive, but it's really not that much of a problem. Image stablizer works really well, as I often have an unsteady hand but it is hardly noticeable with this camcorder. I just wish they made a VCR that could record the footage as well as it was taped!

I've had this camera for almost a year now. I'd say that all of the features that I would expect from a digital camcorder meet and exceed my expectations.

Things that I like the most:
1. Perfect companion for my iMac.
2. Great quality analog-to-digital conversion. A must if you want to play with analog videos in digital world.
3. Solid Canon design, made in Japan if anyone cares.
4. Price.
5. No useless features like in more popular brand.

Things I don't like as much:
1. I think indoors quality is reasonable but it's average with low light. I don't really know if any cameras in that price range do well in low light.
2. Some people complained about motor noise? It's possible, I haven't tried to make any silent movies yet. I add music to all my movies that don't already have some sound.
3. Battery life is short but recharges quickly.
4. Shuts off quickly if idle.
5. You probably wouldn't want to use low-resolution Photo feature espesially if you have a good digital camera but this is probably the only "useless feature".

If you are like me and just like to point/shoot/watch on tv/edit on your computer - it's great.

Like many who have found this camcorder, I liked the canon name and bought based on Canon and value. It was a mistake because I don't feel I should have already used up the life of this camera yet. If you go to several discussion groups you will see it has several issues with the deck, i.e. "transport". Just google zr20/40 etc. and "eat tapes". Suggest you try Sony or Panasonic.

Like many of the other reviewers, my ZR40 is now giving me the infamous "Remove cassette" message and is mangling tapes. I have used it to record maybe 7 hours worth of video over the last two years. Search the web for "canon zr users group" and "eating tapes" to hear similar horror stories. Stay away from Canon camcorders.

Yes it does eat tapes. I have the camera and I have owned it for about 3 years. It did some fine work. I have no complaints except if you need a camera that will never eat tapes, be very wary.

I posted my movies on a couple of websites. I make short movies. I used the Canon ZR40 and made movies with the Sonic Foundry Vegas 4 editing system. It made fine movies in the wmv or rm or mov for Quicktime web formats. My short films are at hollywoodscreams and myhollywoodstar and those are dot com, of course. They are family friendly.

Recently I tried to rewind a tape. It got mangled. I figured it was just the tape. I tried a second tape and another. Each time I would record something OK but the tape would get jammed during rewind. On the movie Hollywood Screams I rewound each scene by hand. That is very hard to do. I had to use two toothpicks to hold the cassette lid open so I could pull the tape out and then wind the spool by hand. It was very time consuming.

The video looks good and I never noticed noise. I am sure each brand of camcorder has some problem. Canon has a mechanism that mangles tapes in rewind after several years of use if my camcorder is typical.

Tom Willett