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

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.

Good quality optics and lots of storage, but not the most portable of camcorders

Impressive optical quality and storage space, though a touch expensive

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

Cheaper than the HF10, although you need to factor in the cost of storage cards

Pocket-sized digital camcorders are becoming more capable all the time. We round up ten of the best

A great next-generation camcorder, but it lacks editing support for the recording format

Another big improvement, but this time it’s enough to make PowerDirector a worthy alternative to its mainstream rivals

High resolution stills and laudable quality for the money, but image stabilisation isn’t the best

It may not be a looker, but in all other respects this Panasonic is a stunning camera

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

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

Great real-time performance, particularly with high definition footage. But the EDIUS Pro software still needs a few more features to usurp the competition.

The first Corel-branded VideoStudio adds one exciting new tool and lots of little improvements.

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