subject: Lets Review The Sony HDR-HC1, Shall We? [print this page] I'm not the most experienced when it comes to camcorders but what I am experienced in is doing my homework. After about a month of extensive research I bought the HDR-HC1 two weeks ago and have to say that it's everything that I could have asked for plus a bunch of features that I haven't even had a chance to try out yet!
The first thing that strikes you about the HC1 is it's understated and strictly form-follows-function styling. There are many more camcorders out there that are agonizingly sexier than the HC1, however, that leads me to the second thing that strikes you - build quality. The product looks like it's been made to a very high specification and although this may be a biased comment but it's also "Made in Japan". Again this might be biased but to me anything that is manufactured in Japan (which in terms of consumer electronics is not much these days) probably costs the company three times as much to manufacture due to high labour costs there. Therefore, it would be safe assume that the only reason Sony would do this is because the expertise to manufacture such a high end product may not be currently available outside Japan.
However saying that, the HC1 is in a league of it's own as there is currently no direct competition. There was another very good camcorder I was considering in the same price range, namely the Panasonic NV-GS400. However, this isn't High Definition and so was blown out. The only other High Def camcorders available are about another 1000 on top of what the HC1 will cost you. Therefore, no competition. There simply isn't any other camcorder that offers you the package, in terms of price, functionality, quality and compactness (relatively speaking) as the HDR-HC1.
The HC1 is also very flexible in terms of recording and playback options. Content recorded in HD can be played back either in HD (if you have a compatible display) or the camcorder will automatically down-convert to non-HD. Also you don't have to buy the really expensive (15 or so per tape) HD tapes to record in HD, the normal tapes will suffice.
Quality of stills isn't brilliant but I suppose the Sony is only offering 2.8M pixels so this was never going to be a two-in-one solution (i.e. camcorder + digital camera). At the high end of the market I wouldn't imagine that many people would be complaining too much about this. I bought the HC1 as a dedicated camcorder, taking stills is a useful option but certainly not criteria on which to judge this camcorder. Having said that, the stills are of a high enough quality that if you didn't have your digital camera handy then you could happily print off decent 6x4 prints. The 10x digital zoom is also very useful and much better than the zoom on anything but the very high end of digital cameras.
Connecting to the TV/PC was very straightforward. It's simply plug-and-play. My laptop didn't have any problems recognizing the device and I need to download any drivers etc. The Nightshot feature is also excellent - I have tried filming in almost pitch dark and the quality is amazing.
Now onto the negatives: Actually there isn't very many gripes I have (at least yet) but one thing that really annoys me are the accessories provided with the camera. For a camcorder that costs 1500 quid, I would expect to get a separate battery charger and a bigger than 16MB memory stick thrown in! Come on Sony!!! And although I haven't done any video editing yet - we have just had our first child! - I noticed that there's no iLink cable provided either.
Another small niggle is the touch screen menus. Although the menus are easy to navigate, it would be useful to be able to navigate by another method such as buttons when in playback mode.
An issue that is probably more appropriate for a "wish list" than a con list for this camcorder is the lack of support for progressive scan (720p or dare I say 1080p). Although having interlaced (1080i) HD capability at this price puts theSony in a class of it's own it would have been nice to have the option to record in 720p. Obviously I have no idea what effect that would have in terms of the price, size etc of the camcorder.
Overall I'm extremely pleased with my purchase and would highly recommend this camcorder to anyone. Apart from the long list of features, it is about as future-proof as you can get with electronics these days.
