6. Sony: Simple but Effective

As on the Panasonic, the non-slip grip makes this camcorder very pleasant to handle. The HDR-CX6 fits nicely in the hand, and has a touch-sensitive screen - another good mark for Sony.

The touchscreen makes navigation very easy. A "Home" button on the screen takes you straight back to the main menu, and the basic adjustments are easily accessible from the very first menu level. To get to the finer adjustments, you need to dig around a little, but we had no difficulty making full use of all of the camcorder’s functions. Finally, let’s hope that the display is robust, because there’s no viewfinder…

Performance

The color rendering is good; a bit pale, but the colors displayed are very true, as we’ll see in the tests ahead. Sound is recorded in simulated 5.1 using mikes set on the front of the unit, and the Sony can record video at several quality levels. The range is from 5 to 15 Mbps, which is a slightly higher level than the Canon offers. We’ll see whether the increase in bandwidth really results in better quality video.

There are nine modes and presets, including NightShot (found on many Sony cameras), which shoots in infrared. Unlike the similar mode on the Panasonic, it works - even if noise does appear quickly as soon as the lighting diminishes.

Unlike the zoom on the other models we tested, Sony’s is fast. As on the other camcorders, there’s a choice of several speeds. We found we had a few problems with the autofocus, which didn’t perform well at times (see our tests).

Finally, Sony has made a good choice in providing a dock with this camcorder. It includes all the connections, and is very handy for transferring data.