With the exception of the face detection, smile shutter and scene modes, the CX100 has no bells or whistles to speak of. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it could use a wind filter. Sony has dropped the NightShot infrared mode for this model. We doubt it was very popular, but we found it useful in emergencies. The CX100 also forgoes Sony's usual 5.1-channel surround sound in favour of more typical 2-channel -- no great loss there.
Performance
The CX100 incorporates Sony's 1/5-inch 2.4-megapixel Exmor ClearVid sensor, and the quality sensor really shows in low-light shooting. Although you probably wouldn't like the results from your latest pub crawl, video shot in your living room should look quite good, thanks to the on-chip noise reduction.
In other ways, the video quality is typical of a lower-cost model. In bright sunlight, there are frequently blown-out highlights. Colours are attractive and saturated but some -- like deep red -- are off. The image stabilisation works fine in tandem with the reasonably long 10x zoom lens. When viewed on a large-screen HDTV, we noticed some smeary edges, although the video generally looks sharp enough. The lens focuses pretty quickly, but it could really use some better coatings -- it displays serious lens flare from bright light coming in at oblique angles.
Conclusion
Given the widespread availability and falling prices of better but larger older models from Sony and other manufacturers, the real buying decision you have to make with the Sony Handycam HDR-CX100 is how much size matters to you. Even if you're keen on a small camcorder, you should probably check out competitors like the
Additional editing by Charles Kloet
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