I paid $1135 for mine at B&H. Worth every penny of it!

Author's Rating:

Pros: Performs like a prosumer cam should. Feels good to the hand, steady shooting.

Cons: The on-board nightlight is an asinine feature.

The Bottom Line: 
Good bang for the buck. It's not often I buy something the equals the hype.

Author's Review
I did a lot of research on the web before settling on this video camera. It's lived up to all expectations. As for low light scenarios? Well, you can buy a Sony with its infrared, but it doesn't have much range, and everything is sort of greenish looking. We own a fine Sony F717 still camera with infrared -- no big deal.

You want to shoot someplace outside with dim lighting? don;t be silly, just turn on a flashlight! Or use an AC lamp, assuming electricity is nearby.

The on-board nightlight feature is the only stupid feature on the Optura Xi. It works, and it's supposed to compete against the Sony infrared. Trash both ideas! (Read above paragraph in regards to lighting.)

The 2-megapixel still camera that comes with this baby is okay, I suppose. But, for quality, you're better off buying a good still camera that is a stand-alone. That said, it's convenient to have a decent 2MP camera for those times you are shooting video and suddenly want to capture a simultaneous still shot, which the Xi does just fine, with no snags.

It was a close call between the Cannon Optura Xi and the 3-MP Sony model. But Canon takes a no-nonsense approach to building a camera, and I don't care to throw away money for pots-and-pan-clanging features I won't ever use. The Sony video cameras are a bit on the high glitz side. I saved about $300 by buying the Optura Xi instead of the comparable Sony model.

The focusing of the Optura Xi takes some getting used to, but once you explore it for a while, you get the hang of it. The crisp focus, the 11-power optical zoom, and the mechanical stablization system combine to make this a great video camera. And there's lots of fine useful features in this baby. Excellent battery life, but we own three of them for convenience.