This is a super value.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Great quality movies, long battery life, very excellent design!

Cons: None.

The Bottom Line: 
It's a great value, with many features found on more expensive models. It is highly reccomended.

Author's Review
Overall, my experience with this product has been excellent. I have enjoyed using it for over a year now, and it hasn’t given me one problem (that’s Sony quality for you). It’s been on several vacations, and it records the memories quite well, and it’s just a joy to use – taping things is no longer a hassle!

I bought this camcorder in October of 2002 for many reasons. One was the $250 sale price, which put this camcorder lower than many others that didn’t have as many features. Another was the Sony name brand – Sony products have never failed to impress me. Thirdly, it was/is very ergonomic; all the buttons are within easy reach, and the camcorder is very easy to use. And finally, it uses the Hi8 tape format, which is in my opinion the most desirable out there.

What have I loved about using this product? Everything! My favorite thing about it is the feel of it in my hand, and the light weight. But there are many other things about it that I like too. First, it has many interesting features that let you choose different types of fade effects, change the picture color to black and white, a sepia tone, pastel, make it look like a film negative, etc. In other words, many snazzy effects to impress your friends with that are still toting around those big VHS camcorders. Also has a slim mode (great for recording yourself), or a stretch mode (great to make people you don’t like look fat).

Another great feature is the zero lux function. For those of us who slept though physical science in high school, that means that it can record in total darkness. No, no supernatural powers here, just a tiny little infrared light. It just lets off a very dim red glow, and isn’t conspicuous. Obviously one could play many dirty tricks on someone else with this feature, but I’ll just leave it at that.

Very few camcorders have the ability to brag about their battery life. This camcorder has some bragging rights here. The battery will last (I believe) about 2 – 2.5 hours with just the viewfinder on, and without the infrared light. If you start zooming, turning on the LCD screen, and recording in total darkness, it reduces the battery life to around 80 – 90 minutes. Not super, but as always, you can buy a new and improved battery from Sony.

Probably the most impressive part of the Sony’s battery is the InfoLithium technology, which generally can gauge the battery life accurately down to about 10 minutes. That’s really neat. Most camcorders don’t do that, and are bad at predicting when their battery will lie limp like a rotting carrot.

Some of the features on this Sony are great for people who don’t feel comfortable with video editing. Myself? Oh, I love video editing, so these features aren’t that useful to me. But this camcorder can turn out some good looking stuff with the fade effects. It also has an option to put a title of your own on the screen – nice to play with too.

What have I not liked? In reality, I’ve been totally satisfied. Ha ha. Not much else to say here.

“Overall”, you ask, “why should I buy THIS camcorder over the cheap one I saw advertised?” Well, it has very good picture quality, very good audio quality, and a very well-thought out design. That’s the bottom line there – it’s a good value for the money. What we’re all looking for these days.