Sony's first CMOS based consumer HD camera brings control and fidelity to images in a package that's hard to beat.

Camcorder, still camera and portable media player all in one sleek package.

A fully featured hard disk AVCHD camcorder with plenty of recording space

A fully featured hard disk AVCHD camcorder with plenty of recording space

A high end DVD-based camcorder for quick and clean shooting.

No match for Sony’s SR12 on features, but incredibly easy to use and an ideal ‘my first HD camcorder’

Canopus first made its name providing top-notch 3Dfx cards. Realising the deadly competitiveness and pace of that market, however, Canopus has moved on and repositioned itself as a company specialising in video editing.

Better HD image quality than you’d expect for such a small camcorder, but the price is still a little high.

Great image quality and plenty of enthusiast features for a very reasonable price

The marker has been laid down. Sony's pulled off another AVCHD stunner that will be hard to beat this year

A great value camcorder that’s capable of some decent results.

HD camcorders enter the mainstream once and for all. With image quality like this, there’s little reason to spend more.

Two Kodak cameras and each capable of rich looking 720P HD video. Whether you’re looking for a big zoom or a pocket snapper, these two models have it covered.

An entry-level HD camcorder with an identity crisis, but at this price, it puts quality in the hands of everyone.

A good price coupled with outstanding image quality – a good budget alternative to the Panasonic HDC-HS9

Impressive optical quality and storage space, though a touch expensive

Canon’s first hard disk-based AVCHD camcorder gets it mostly right, with a good level of features and the best image quality we’ve yet seen from the format.

Canon grabs the crown for the most fully featured HDV camcorder for under $1500

A dinky AVCHD camcorder, with respectable video performance and a reasonable price.

The Creative PC-CAM 850 is a 2-megapixel digital camera geared to double up as a Webcam and a camcorder. Priced at a low $279, it hosts an impressive 16MB of built-in memory, writes to both MMC and SD card media and also has S-Video output.