Great looks and very functional, nice little camcorder (Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD700)

Member Name: Jonny_L

Product:	Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD700
Date:	04/08/08 (223 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks beautiful, good sound quality, image is great for the price, pocket sized, 7MP stills

Disadvantages: Screen is a little wobbly and the picture can appear slightly "digitized" on big screens. OK though

Sanyo's Xacti VPC HD700 is among the first of the relatively cheap high definition camcorders. OK so it's not 1080p, but for under £300, 720p will do me just fine, thanks. The camera is unmistakably pretty. I've got the brown/gold one, which looks lovely in a sort of old-school meets new tech way. It has a reasonably decent sized wide screen, I believe it's 2.7 inches, which flips and rotates any way you may require.

The camera has just a 5x optical zoom, however unless you're going to stick it on a tripod, you wouldn't want any more. Even 5x with the Xacti's optional stability control is a bit on the wobbly side when in inexperienced hands.

The Xacti's party peice is it's 7.1 megapixel still camera mode. Now you're not going to get DSLR quality out of this thing, but it's useful for snaps. I took mine to the London Motor show recently and it did get some really nice shots. It would appear that when in auto mode, the Xacti tends to err on the side of caution when selecting ISO speeds, as a lot of the darker pictures I took came out fairly grainy, but I think with a bit of fettling it should produce some good dark images.

But enough about that, you don't buy a camcorder for it's still image quality! The video that the xacti produces is smooth, though the HD side of things would appear to exist purely in resolution as opposed to colouring and saturation. I prefer to think of it as a good standard definition camera to be honest, as it's a little bit blocky on a 42" screen. It's very smooth though, and unless you're filming really fast moving objects you don't notice this too much. Don't be put off by this, as it's really just me speaking as a perfectionist, and you really get a lot of bang for your buck. The sound quality is very good on top.

The camera is fairly frugal when it comes to memory and battery. Being an SD camera it'll also take SDHC cards. I have an 8gb card in mine and it's good for just under 2 hours of HD footage, as is the battery, so it works out quite well really.

The only gripes I have with the camera are firstly that the screen feels a little bit on the loose side. It's not tacky and it's certainly not going anywhere, but when closed you can move it slightly in the beautiful chromed hinge. Also make sure that you don't get any dirt between the screen and the body, as you'll end up with little scratches thanks to the ultra compact design.

Another issue I've found is that you can't seem to hook it up via HDMI without using the supplied cradle, not a problem at first, but it also means you can't hook it up without charging the camera at the same time. I wonder what that'll do to the battery life after a while.

All in all though, these faults are very minor in the grand scheme of things. The quality for the price is excellent, and the Xacti is a tiny (about the size of the average compact camera), yet it feels quite robust. Because of this plus the price means you probably won't be tempted to just leave it at home. After all, what good is a £1000+ camcorder that you're scared to take with you?

Summary: Good imaging and sound wrapped in a cute little package. For the price, I doubt you could do better.

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