An above-average all-rounder that adds 720p recording to an already attractive mix

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.

Canon are only the second manufacturer in the Australian market to provide a flash based video camera (Panasonic is the other). Daniel Long gives his first impressions.

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

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

Easily one of the cheapest 60GB hard drive cameras, but its image quality is cheap too.

One beautiful camera, with one awful flaw.

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

Although it takes great footage directly to a hard drive, it's being held back by a few problems.

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

Panasonic has gone above and beyond, releasing its NV-GS35 with its massive 30x optical zoom, dwarfing the usual 20 or so times zooms found on other cameras.

The Panasonic NV-GS15 is the cheaper version of the NV-GS120, but you wouldn't pick it to look at them. It is not until you start to use it that you discover why it is $600 cheaper than its big brother with the three CCD's. The single, 800,000 (400,000 effective) pixel CCD produces average picture quality and certainly nothing that would compare with the 1.62 million (1.02 million effective) of the NV-GS120.

Good things often come in small packages and that's the case with Sony's PC108E. It is only fractionally larger than the JVC GR-DX77 (the smallest camera in the lab) but weighs in 65 grams lighter. Sony has kept it compact by providing a separate docking station that contains the USB, DV and S-Video ports. There also are AV and additional microphone connectors on the camera itself.

Just because something is cheap does not always make it nasty, nor does it necessarily make it the best buy. The possibility of the D701i being cheap and nasty was certainly a concern when the first one arrived and failed to operate, however, it was quickly replaced and the replacement worked fine straight from the box.

Hitachi pioneered the idea of consumer cameras capable of recording video direct to DVD. The early models were large and relatively expensive but high quality. It has taken a while for the idea to take off but it is certainly gaining momentum with a number of competitors now coming into the market. Hitachi has responded by progressively making its cameras more compact and adding extra features such as a SD memory card for storing still images or compressed video clips.