The Panasonic took the top spot in our Labs this month by a clear margin, but it was a somewhat stealthy contender. Its plain looks do a good job of hiding a great set of features and the ability to record extremely high-quality footage, proving the adage that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Its unusual shape seems to have been dictated entirely by its components, rather than by any attempt at aesthetic design, and the result is a chassis which looks like it has been created as an afterthought. This is barely disguised by the use of several different shades of grey, silver and black in its finish.

If you can look past this, however, this is a camcorder with an awful lot to offer. It emerged near the top of all our quality tests, winning some outright, partly because of the three separate 1/6in CCD sensors, each of which is used to capture one primary colour. This is a distinct advantage in low-light conditions, and the Panasonic’s colour reproduction in dark environments was beaten only by the large single 1/2.7in sensor in the Canon HG10.

No other camera matched the effectiveness of the Panasonic’s image stabilisation feature, however, which eliminated much of the shaking motion in our test without distorting or shrinking the video. This makes it capable of recording at high zoom levels without a tripod, capturing viewable footage when otherwise highly capable cameras such as the HF10 lose clarity. Audio quality was also excellent, with the 5.1 microphone capturing voices clearly without the need for an external unit: a good thing, as there’s no socket for an external mic.

The other impressive feature is its cavernous 60GB hard disk – enough space to record more than a day of Full HD video. This, along with the sheer quality of the videos it took, was enough to secure it our overall award.

Its looks may not be a particularly strong point, but it’s what lies inside the HDC-HS9 that makes a lasting impression. It’s important to note, of course, that this is the most expensive in the Labs by some margin, but its combination of quality, features and storage make it worth the extra cash.