Camcorders

Canon HF10

The Canon HF10 definitely deserves a spot on your short list of potential home-movie camcorders. This dual flash memory combines 16GB of built-in flash memory and a slot for SDHC. Its performance is above average for its class, and footage retains a significant amount of detail

Editor's rating 8.0

Canon HV30

The Canon HV30 is an upgrade to last year's top-notch HV20. This model features a sleeker-looking black body and much longer battery life, making it a well-designed prosumer camcorder with a useful feature set, great performance and excellent video quality

Editor's rating 8.0

Toshiba Gigashot A100F

The Toshiba Gigashot A100F has put high definition and large capacity into the hands of the everyday shooter with its venture into the HD camcorder world. It's a beautifully-styled, respectably performing excellent HD camcorder for someone looking to film some simple footage

Editor's rating 7.0

Canon HG10

The Canon HG10, the hard drive-based, AVCHD-compatible camcorder, takes some chances. For starters, it has one of the most comfortable zoom switches in its class. Plus, upping its low-light performance, both focus and video quality, means it goes beyond other models to produce sharp photo and video

Editor's rating 7.5

JVC Everio GZ-HD3

The JVC Everio GZ-HD3 is a scaled-down version of the Everio GZ-HD7 released a few months ago. It includes the same triple-CCD design and many of the same features, although it includes a Konica Minolta with a 10x optical zoom range and digital image stabilisation

User rating 4.5

Editor's rating 6.1

Sony Handycam HDR-CX6EK

There are some great features squashed into the tiny body of the Sony Handycam HDR-CX6EK. It's small thanks to its AVCHD flash memory, and you can use the touchscreen interface to navigate a nice complement of controls, all through the sharp Zeiss T lens. Do you have room for a little 'un?

User rating 8.5

Editor's rating 8.0

Panasonic HDC-SD1

A flash memory camcorder with joystick navigation, Panasonic's HCD-SD1 has a small design and boasts loads of shooting features with superb high-definition video quality

Editor's rating 6.9

Sony Handycam HDR-SR7E

The Sony Handycam HDR-SR7E delivers cutting-edge capabilities along with high-quality high definition video. Its great HD experience is buoyed by plenty of manual controls and with a comfortable experience through a touchscreen interface and small stature, you'll be floating along

Editor's rating 8.0

Sony Handycam HDR-SR8

Leading Sony's charge on to the high-definition battlefield is the gorgeous Handycam HDR-SR8, a camcorder that boasts a gargantuan 100GB hard drive, a 10x Carl Zeiss zoom lens and Sony's Super SteadyShot and Super NightShot systems

Editor's rating 9.2

Canon XH A1

Canon's XH A1 uses the same technology as the company's professional-level XL H1, but trades in the interchangeable lens for a price that's far easier to stomach -- making it an appealing model for prosumers

Editor's rating 8.9

JVC Everio GZ-HD7

JVC's Everio GZ-HD7 is a hard-drive-based camcorder that attempts to combine the benefits of three CCD sensors with high-definition image quality. It doesn't produce the best videos we've seen, however it does offer an excellent range of features

User rating 5.0

Editor's rating 6.3

Canon XH G1

The Canon XH G1 model is the mid-range of choices for videographers. It uses the same technology as the professional-level XL H1, but uses an equivalent of the H1's JackPack and -- like its sister model, the XH A1 -- an interchangeable lens to drive down the cost, which will be attractive to budding filmmakers

Editor's rating 8.9

Sony Handycam HDR-HC7

It may be a tad on the pricey side, but as a high-definition camcorder, Sony's Handycam HDR-HC7 is well worth the money -- video quality is excellent and there are a good range of manual controls

Editor's rating 8.0

Panasonic SDR-S150

It sounds like the perfect holiday camcorder: it's very light because it records to an included 2GB SD card, it's got three CCDs, a 10x zoom lens and optical image stabilisation; but image quality is a problem

Editor's rating 6.6

Sony Handycam HDR-SR1

Sony's sturdy, adaptable camcorder is a pleasure to use. Hard disk capacity, a great design and a broad feature set -- including AV, component and HDMI output jacks and a manual control ring for adjusting exposure, focus and white balance -- make this the consumer HD model to beat for 2006

Editor's rating 8.0

Sony Handycam HDR-FX7

Like its sibling the HDR-FX1, the HDR-FX7 is a three-chip, 'prosumer' hi-def MiniDV camcorder. It offers a hefty 20x zoom and excellent video quality, although its sound options are less satisfactory

Editor's rating 8.0

Canon DC10

Canon's DC10 has an almost identical design to its sibling, the DC20 -- the latter benefits from a higher resolution CCD for stills photography and a night mode. If you're used to MiniDV, you might find the DC10's footage disappointing, but casual users may well find the convenience of straight-to-DVD recording more than compensates

Editor's rating 6.3

Canon HV10

Canon puts high-definition video recording in your pocket, although to make room in said pocket requires removing more than £800 from it. Still, that makes the Canon HV10 the cheapest, smallest HDV camcorder to date. The HV10 has more going for it than just this month's novelty value, if you can overlook some design quirks

Editor's rating 7.5

JVC Everio GZ-MG505

JVC's Everio GZ-MG505 is a hard-disk-based 3CCD camcorder that follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, the GZ-MC500, which remains an extremely impressive camcorder, even by today's standards. The MG505 adds a larger hard disk and improved optics, but it still records to proprietary video format, which may not please more professional users

User rating 7.3

Editor's rating 7.7

Sony Handycam DCR-SR100

Sony may not be the first manufacturer to enter the hard drive camcorder market -- that distinction goes to JVC's Everio models. But with excellent video quality and fluid operation, the Sony Handycam DCR-SR100 puts all but the more expensive JVC 500 series models, as well as Sony's own DVD-based models, to shame

User rating 8.0

Editor's rating 7.4