Yeah I got it at Henry's, figured best place and the price was right. The only thing I had to get over was that it looks like a toy, not a professional camera. Like buying a little pocket digital camera VS a digital SLR. Quality is great though, it's pretty much dominated the market. I used to own a $5,000 (at the time) Canon GL-1 which looks a lot more pro, but the Vixia wipes the floor with it for video quality nowadays.
There is a Sony that's comparable and looks like it's built a bit better, less plastic etc.. But it was maybe $400-500 more, and I just didn't really see the need. I just use it to capture some moments while my baby is still a baby.
The sony has a nicer, larger LCD too that was calling my name
Also at the advice of Danza I went with the tape model for a number of reasons.. Tapes are literally $2 if you order online, and record 60 minutes. Once you've filled up a tape, it's already archived. That was the big kicker for me. The HDD models sound cool, but I don't wanna have to bring a laptop with me on vacation to keep transferring stuff off, and even if you do that at home, it's going to your PC HDD.. Not really safe for long term storage. So then you have to burn it all off on DVD's or setup a RAID station, it's just messy. The ones that record to DVD only record 20 minutes to each DVD.. So fuck that.
Tapes I can just pop out and put em on the shelf for many years to come. I know they'll degrade over decades, but I can live with that vs losing it all in a HD crash