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Canon HF S20 is generally excellent!!
I owned a Canon HF S100 prior to this camera and only bought this upgrade due to being able to sell my HFS100 for a good price.

First, the positives:

Powered IS: This little button is incredible. It makes getting still images at high zoom possible. It has to be tested to be believed. I was blown away. I hadn't seen this feature marketed very highly in other reviews I had read, but it really is good.

The Screen: Wow! Compared to the previous generation this screen is incredible. It is MASSIVE and looks amazing! Very well done Canon! The only gripe is that because it is a touch screen it gets covered in fingerprints, but the touch UI is also fantastic.

Video Quality: Excellent! I only ever use MXP 24mbit recording since you can always render at a lower res, but you can never get those pixels back if you didn't record them! The quality of the video at this setting is awesome!

The negatives:

Battery: Seriously, they might as well not even include a battery with the camera. If it makes it through 20 minutes I'd be surprised. I purchased a high capacity battery for my previous model as it had the same battery life issues (although this camera is worse now that it has that great screen and powered IS) so this extended battery gives my about 2 hours of life, which is far more acceptable (but it did cost an additional )

USB: My previous model was the HFS100, so I only used memory cards and would put them in a card reader to get the video into my PC. The HFS20 has 32Gb built in storage, but niether my PC nor my laptop seem to recognise the camera as a USB device, despite playing around with the settings. I am running Windows 7 on both, and neither work. In order to get video off the camera I have to put an SD Card in the slot and move the video from internal storage to the card. What a pain! I have set the camera to record only to card now to save this step, and will use the internal storage only if I need it, so it is kind of a waste. I haven't looked much online yet to see if this is a common problem or not, but it's a real pain!

Overall though, I would highly recommend this camera. Save money and get the HFS200 without the internal storage though since it's kind of useless if it isn't accessable.

Very nice camcorder
I bought this to replace my Canon HV20 (HDV) camcorder. I was getting tired of tape-based technology & finally decided to make the plunge into tapeless.

I am very pleased with my new HF S20. Image quality is spectacular - noticably better in HD on my widescreen TV than the HV20. The image does get noisy/grainy in low-light shots, but this is characteristic of most cams at this level. There are several image stabilization modes to choose from. These seem to work very well.

I really like the touch screen menu-based interface. I find this a LOT more intuitive and easy to use over a button/scroll menu type interface. The best touch screen feature is the track focus/auto face detect mode. The screen shows a square around the face/object it is currently holding focus on. If you want something else to be focused, just touch the screen on the object - focus & tracking will shift to that. Very intuitive/easy to use!

I find the cam a lot easier to hold than my old one, since there is no "tape bulge" in the housing.


The USB and HDMI out ports are in an awkward place (under the hand strap), and the flip-up port cover seems rather flimsy (it would've been better if it was a slide-open door like the ones for the other interfaces). I fear I will break it one of these days.

Battery life seems rather short with the supplied battery (maybe only an hour or less at best). Make sure you pick up a high-capacity battery if you tend to do long shoots. And if you do, I recommend you also get the separate charger so you can charge one battery while using the other. (you can charge the battery using the AC cable in the camcorder, but the battery will NOT charge if the camcorder is in use while plugged in - big design flaw IMO)

While tapeless technology is very convenient, there is one big drawback -- storing and archiving your videos. You will eventually have to delete the videos stored on the camcorder in order to make room for new videos. This means storing it on a hard drive or other media as your master copy. This procedure is not as convenient as just taking out a tape and popping in a new one.

Overall I am very pleased with the HF S20. Definitely a keeper!

PROS:

- great image/video quality
- built-in video light/flash (automatically pops up when needed)
- easy to use touch screen interface
- good image stabilization modes
- tapeless. The camcorder is ready to use almost immediately - no tape spool-up or mechanism delay

CONS:

- awkward USB and HDMI port locations (I use these most often)
- rather short battery life with the supplied pack
- camera does not charge the battery while plugged in AND you are using it. Gotta turn it off to charge

Love the Camera - I finally got the files
I loved this camcorder, although it's a bit over-engineered from a menu/settings perspective. Fabulous video. Clear sound. I even purchased the 5.1 dolby microphone.

Thanks to those that responded to my eariler review I figured out how to get the files off of the camera. However,the other critiques stand.

Second, the battery drains very quickly. Best case is 60 minutes of life. I have a 32Gb memory that can hold 4 hours of video...but have the recharge the battery 4 times to fill it. And to charge it there isn't a provided plug in charger, so you have to connect the camera to the outlet with the provided AC cord.

Third, the dolby 5.1 microphone is not plug and play. They provide a memory card with a firmware update on it. The problem is that you need to find the firmware menu using the not sensitive enough touch screen. After 30 minutes of looking and manual references I gave up. I did find the menu later when I was failing to connect the camcorder to the iMac but I don't think I could find it again.

Great pictue...hardly plug and play...needs a better battery.