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

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

Huge storage for the money, but quality can’t match the more expensive models in this group

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

Impressive optical quality and storage space, though a touch expensive

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

The smallest, cheapest camera on test, but unsurprisingly, it also has the poorest image quality

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

Key improvements over the SD5 make this a still more enticing pocket HD camcorder prospect

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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