Sony Handycam DCR-SX33E

I was looking for a good quality SD memory-based camcorder with an ease of use and nice looks. I bought a Panasonic SDR-S50 first but returned it as the image quality was disastrous. I went to John L. and bought it £179 only to see that t went down to £159 a month later.

The camera has good picture quality as for a non-HD device, but it lacks a tiny bit of life in colours. The sound is also good, stereo, clear and loud.

I find the icons on the touch screen very small and quite hard to press them with a finger or a nail. You have to have some sort of plastic pointer to operate it properly, as you have almost no buttons at all.

Recording speed is also very good, accepts both SD and MemoryPro cards. You gert a standard 550mah battery which lasts around 2hof constant recording, upgrade to model of 3-4x times the capacity is a must if you want to go recording outdoors or on a vacation.

Zoom is 60x optical, but it looses focus if you are zooming to an object too close to you, it needs to be in distance (100m<...) or so to use it. The antishake is good, but have seen better in Panasonic cams.

In general great bargain for a top quality product in upper SD memory, non HD cameras.