( I posted this in GD and have not received any responses. I'm hoping folks here will help.)

I need to get a belated birthday present for my wife. She's expressed an interest in a camcorder but I have
absolutely no idea what I should be looking for. I did a quick search on the net and it led me to a Canon HFR500.
Would this suitable for a someone who has had no experience with video? I'm working with about a $300 budget.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

I think that would be a fine camera to use.  

I work for a small video production company and deal a lot with personal events (Weddings, Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, Birthday Parties) so we get asked these types of questions a lot.  Here are just a few warnings I like to give people about the newer camcorders that record to either a internal HDD or SD Card.

1)  There is no tape to fill up and put on a shelf.  So you have to be diligent with backing up your footage.  I personally suggest at least 2 external HDD's that can be put in a safe.
2)  You will need some sort of video editing and dvd/blu ray burning software it you want a hard copy of the footage to watch.  There are other ways to watch digital footage on a TV, but there are literally thousands of different ways and they are very dependent on different pieces of hardware you have (computers, tv's, media players) so it is impossible to give a blind recommendation.
3)  BACKUP
4)  Use the SD card and not the internal memory of the card.  I generally recommend to not get anything bigger than a 16gb SD card.  Depending on how you have your camera set up to record you will probably get around or a little over 2 hours of record time on 16gb.  I personally like to try to keep my home stuff around 1 hour and 45 min, to keep from trying to cram to much stuff onto a DVD.  If you go out and buy a 64gb SD card and fill it up, for one it will be harder to split it up and burn 4 or 5 separate DVD's.  Two - if you have a crash with the SD card and it is almost full, you just lost a TON of footage that you probably have not backed up yet.
5)  BACKUP
6) On the topic of SD card crashes.  NOT all SD cards are the same.  Just because they look the same, a $3 16gb card that you see in the checkout lane is NOT the same as a $50 card.  Having said that though, with all the higher capacities out now you can actually get good 16gb SD cards pretty cheap.  These SanDisk Extreme UHS-1 are really good cards.  A couple of years ago something like them would be around $80-$100.  Get a good brand and look for UHS-1 and you should be good to go.
7)  BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP
8)  Buy an extra battery or two for the video camera.  They do not last long.
9)  Buy a couple of SD cards.

Phil