Reviews of Video Cameras

You know the drill—HDD and flash memory-based high-def camcorders are hot as blank tape and disc models fall out of favor. Recently we reviewed two newly introduced hard disc drive editions—the JVC GZ-HD40 and Canon Vixia HG21. Now it’s Panasonic’s turn for a new AVCHD high-def model but this one only records to SDHC cards. Since there’s no drive, disc or tape mechanism it’s incredibly compact and lightweight (13.4 ounces loaded versus 19 for the HG21). And after getting a world of grief from reviewers including yours truly, the company has moved from a trio of CCD chips to three CMOS sensors. Hopefully this will bring Panasonic back into the game but there’s a lot more to camcorders than imaging devices. Let’s see if our friends from Osaka have something to cheer about—or if they have to go back to the drawing board…

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The JVC Everio GZ-MS100 is an average budget SD-card-based camcorder that's more attractive for its small design and relatively average video quality than its unique interface and one-touch uploads to YouTube.

The Panasonic SDR-SW20's only saving grace is its water-, shock-, and dust-proof body (and even those have limitations). Otherwise there's no reason to buy this pocket camcorder.

As we reported in the recent JVC GZ-HD40 review, high-definition hard disc drive and flash memory-based camcorders are arriving fast and furiously. One of the newest on the scene is the Canon Vixia HG21, a model with a whopping 120GB HDD, a 3.3-megapixel CMOS sensor, potent 12x zoom and optical image stabilization to help eliminate the shakes from your videos. What’s also really great about this one is the fact it records at a very fast bit rate of 24 Mbps—almost the level of many HDV and MPEG-2 TS camcorders. In theory a faster bit rate means better video. Whether this baby delivered the goods is exactly what we wanted to discover…

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Like its cousin, the flash-based HF11, Canon's Vixia HG20 delivers excellent HD video quality and performance albeit in a slightly larger, heavier package. However, you do get more storage space and a lower price.

If you don't want to, need to, or simply can't shell out a couple hundred dollars more for an HD camcorder, the Sony Handycam DCR-SR85 delivers decent SD video and copious recording time.

The inexorable march away from tapes and discs has picked up steam in Camcorder Land—and this trend will continue until MiniDV and DVD home video makers take their place on the obsolete shelf next to Walkman cassette music players and analog televisions. This won’t happen overnight, but it’s happening right in front of our eyes as flash-based and hard disk drive camcorders win-over the public and take share from competing formats. Basically, it’s the iPod Phenomenon dramatically reshaping the camcorder biz. According to industry execs, tape and DVD cam sales are dropping while the new—and definitely cooler—formats take over. Almost all of the recent releases were memory card, flash or HDD based. And many of them are high-definition. I’m a big fan of high-def hard drive camcorders because their storage capabilities can’t be beat. It’s great not worrying if you have enough blank tape or DVDs for saving memories. And the small size and weight of flash-based models is also a winner. Finally, a high-definition camcorder is the only way to go, even though they’re much more expensive than SD ($799 USD is still about the cheapest, compared to $250 USD for MiniDV). With these preferences on the table, I was happy to test a new JVC HD Everio with a 120GB HDD. This high-def camcorder saves up to 15 hours of best-quality AVCHD video plus it performs several other unique tricks we’ll disclose on the following pages. Is it worth 1,300 clams? Read on, read on…

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While bigger than most of its competitors and high priced for a mini camcorder, the Kodak Zi6's attractive design and decent video quality adequately compensate for some usability drawbacks.

Like its sibling the HF10, Canon's flash-based Vixia HF11 delivers excellent HD video quality and performance in a tiny package. However, the HF11 delivers a bit more value for its lower price.

The Sony Handycam DCR-SR45 has a good design and reasonable feature set for its price, but the video quality doesn't measure up to the rest of the package.