EastStar ProLi-ion High Capacity Intelligent Camcorder Battery Pack to Replace Canon BP-827

I have not had a chance to time the actual life of the battery, if I do get the chance to record 5+ hours of video I will update this review if the battery does not perform. Otherwise the assumption is the battery life is as much as reported by my camera.To start with I am using this battery with a Canon Vixia HFM30. The stock battery reports 90 minutes of battery life at the same settings as this battery which reports 322 minutes. Overall I think that is a huge improvement! On the lowest quality setting on my camera I have over 6 hours of available space to take video. When I will ever record that much video at one time I am not sure. Taking advice I have read, I wanted to make sure I had twice as much juice for the camera then what I expect to record. Since I am using my camera to primarily record presentations for a PHP user's group I am Vice President of, I need to insure I have anywhere from 1.5 - 3 hours of power.At this time I do not see why the battery would not last at least that amount of time. As stated in the product description this battery will report the time it has left. Which many other 3rd party batteries will not do. It is big, adding about 1.25" of length to my camera, which I expected. The only reason I did not give a full 5 stars is the reported time on my camera. The product description says 6 hours, the reported time is somewhere around 5.3 hours. Personally I think this is close enough but would have been happier to have been told 5 hours and realized I had more. Obviously though for the price I can not complain much. In fact if it only lasts 4 hours on average I will still feel 4 stars is accurate.Price being the determining factor here. Equivalent batteries are sold for 4 times as much! Excellent product in my mind and I do not regret purchasing at all.Edit: Also wanted to note the pictures show a 3400mAh battery, the product description says 2900mAh, the battery I received was branded Power2000 with 3000mAh. Personally not a huge deal to me. Although I thought it worth mentioning.

Initial testing of this battery finds no problems. It came half-charged (172 min) and I've been testing with that charge. My HFS20 is not complaining about the battery [read update 3]. However, build quality is lower than Canon (no surprise): The electrical contacts on this battery are not as consistently aligned as they are with the official Canon battery. See photos. I had to wiggle the battery a little to get it to seat properly.All in all, a worthwhile purchase [well, maybe not--see update 3]Update: While using up the default charge on the battery today, the time remaining spontaneously started displaying as a question mark. Then later I got the "cannot communicate with battery" message when turning the camera back on. Maybe a full charge from empty--something Canon recommends for their own batteries--will establish a reliable time remaining display.Update 2 (Sept 22 2010): It is clear from the customer photos -- if the customers all posted to the correct product listing -- that several battery suppliers are involved here, and different people are getting different batteries. This explains why some people are saying "works great" and others are having problems. At the moment I am having problems, but I am going to try a few more things before posting my latest experience.Update 3: To recap my experience from the start, the camera was giving minutes-remaining estimates with this battery, thus "communicating" with the battery, when I first installed it with the factory charge. A few days later, the camera on startup began complaining that it could not communicate with the battery. You just have to dismiss that message and you can continue to use the battery, but you get no minutes remaining readout. Now that the battery is fully discharged, the battery will not charge on the camera. The manual says that if the camera cannot communicate with the battery, the battery will not be charged. I did not buy a separate charger, so now I have a paperweight. The lack of camera charging is contrary to the claims in the Amazon product listing for this battery, so hopefully I can get a quick free replacement. You experience may differ (see update 2).The quick way to know if your battery is being charged: If the red charging LED is blinking roughly 1X/sec, you're good. If it is blinking more than 2X/sec, you are spinning your wheels.I'll admit it hurts to pay Canon 3X the price for their battery, but that is starting to look like a good option. At the least, buy a wall charger with this one, then you should be OK.Update 4: The merchant was out of stock on this battery, I got a refund, no problems.

Just a little info for everyone:Bought 1 of these batteries from YoKool. The Battery is labeled 'Maxtek' '7.4v 3400mAh' and 'made in china'. This battery worked very well. Charged in my Canon HFS10 and HFS30 and Canon Charger. It worked so good i figured at that price i could get a second spare.Bought the second one from BlueMall. the Battery is labeled 'Battery Pack' '7.4v Li-ion' and 'made in china'.(1st warning sign) Unfortunately I didn't look at that info before I used it. It charged in my Canon charger, but the charger would not light the fully charged light (2nd warning) I used it in one of my cameras (outdoors on a bright sunny day). That particular camera shut off twice during the event - I thought it had something to do with heat. The next time I used it was indoors and air conditioned. Unfortunately this was a critical event (meaning the camera couldn't stop running, but also couldn't be plugged in, using HFS30) When the battery life was showing under 100 minutes, the camera started to randomly shut off. I swapped batteries after the 2nd time and continued. When back home, I attempted to charge the battery, which would no longer charge.Bottom line: get the branded battery! most likely there is a reason why they don't want their name on the battery. I will buy another, just not from BlueMall.