Recommendations on, not if, but WHERE to buy the HMC150...

[Robert M Wright]

where's the cheapest price?

There's some place called "Electronic Way" advertising a price of $3099, but I've never heard of them. For all I know it could be one of those operations with a corporate address in some ghetto that doubles as a crack-house and/or brothel.

 

[VisualInteractiveDynamic]

Be WARY of JR.com. They sold me an HMC70 promising a Blu-Ray player. No player. The camera was used, so I couldn't send in the stuff for the rebate. Every day I would call them and get the runaround. The manual was marked up, and the camera had scratches. From trying to get the Blu-Ray player, at least, I ran out of time to return it. Their is nothing I can do since I'm out of state.

DNathan, yea double check with Panasonic or with an authorized dealer if you find a deal that is too good to be true...they can confirm if someone is in fact an authorized dealer...most dealers like ourselves can price match any other dealer (most of the time) if not offer you a better deal...we all need the sales so everyone really tries to go the extra effort , or at least I know we do...

 

[VisualInteractiveDynamic]

Looks like their price is back up to $3495. Am I missing something?

Hi AdrenalineSleep, Panasonic started getting really strict a little while ago about what price we could advertise online (MAP Policy...as noted on the our HMC150 page)...even if your website offered coupons or add to cart for lower price...we technically are not allowed to do it anymore ... while we can't offer the really really low price as of now, we have our new selling price online

 

[catdude]

Guys, I am not feeling lucky enough.....
Here in India, the Indian dealer company of Panasonic Professional Products is giving the price that is nearly twice than the US price.

Its 4424 USD without receipt, and 5845 USD with receipt. And this is even more than US price of HPX170. :undecided

I Don't think it is company's original price, but I still cant figure out the current Asian Price of the HMC152.
But it seems something is going wrong here, either with dealers or panasonic.

Otherwise I am thinking about buying HMC150 from B&H myself, but it is back-ordered there and I want the cam before 26th of May.
Is this B&H - HMC150 Package really available on B&H? since there is no sign of Back-ordered or out-of-stock?
A week before, I confirmed that B&H ships HMC internationally.

Anyways, Is there any way to determine the average Asian price of HMC152?

Ravi, here in Japan the HCM 155 is selling for 3260$, but that is with the crappo dollar exchange rate. Too bad the dollar is so useless here. You could order it from Denki Station in Osaka. However they are up front that the warranty is only good for Japan. The HVX 205a is cheaper here, about 3,000 US and the price keeps coming down.

here is a shopping comparison site: http://kakaku.com/camera/video-camera/ma_0/?price=95000-99999999

Hope that helps.

 

[ZFHProductions]

Do you think that lower prices will be available in the close future?

 

[Allen Ellis]

I don't know, potentially. When the HMC150 was announced last summer the MSRP was $4500. By the time it was released in fall/winter it had a street price around $3500. When I bought mine in April the price at B&H was $3199 plus a free large battery (~$200 or so?). Many retailers had it around there, $3,249 was another common price.

As of May or so B&H has raised their price back up to $3400, I believe (yes, it's gone up). It's got to be related to the fact that B&H can't keep these cameras in stock. That, plus the whirlwind of positive reviews I find about the HMC150 (it's hard to find any real negative reviews) suggests to me that it will continue to be in demand for some time.

Also consider how new the camera is - it's only been around for the last 9 months or so. It took what, 2 or 3 years for Panasonic to upgrade the HVX200 with the 200a, so a replacement isn't exactly over the horizon. Besides, even if there was I don't see a whole lot to improve on besides adding a second SDHC slot or perhaps some sensor upgrades, which by the way are are near-perfect for this price range already. If that is the case, we could assume that even after the 150a's come out, the HMC-150 would still hold a good deal of value.

Long story short: you might be able to hang tight for B&H to drop their prices a few hundred bucks again, or, I'm pretty sure other retailers have it for $3,249 still (VidInc, I think?). But the prevailing widsom here is that, if you need it now, buy it now. If you don't need it, wait for something else to be announced.

Heck, Canon could surprise us all with a tapeless XH-A1s, you never know. Personally I'm not holding my breath but who knows?