I need a HD camcorder for my new born baby, but with a limited budget. So I compared canon HF200, Sony CX100 and Panasonic TM20R since they are all in sub 600 range. I tried all of them in local stores and finally settled with canon HF200, although it’s a little bit more expensive than cx100 and TM20R.
The sensor of HF200 is the biggest one among these three, 1 /4″ (1/5″ for CX100, 1/6″ for TM20R). It guaranteed best resolution, 2.99 Megapixels ( 2.3 M for cx100, 1.14M for TM20R) and in my experience larger sensor also helps lower the noise in dark environment. Indeed, minimal illumination condition for HF200 is 0.4 lux, much better than thre other two. I took a couple of sample shots in local stores and the picture from HF200 for dark environment is acceptable. Sony cx100 is barely acceptable and Panasonic TM20R is total crap, not even as good as my webcam.
After I finally bought HF200, I never regretted! The video quality is just superb. For the 1920×1080 quality videos, it has two modes: MXP(24Mbps) and FXP(17Mbps). To be honest I can’t tell the quality difference between these two. I guess unless you are gonna do massive editing, FXP is good enough for daily usage. So on a 16GB sd memory card, I can record 135 minutes 1080p HD video.
The still image shot quality is quite good too, and it’s powered by the 15x optical lens(35mm equivalent: 39.5 – 592.5mm). It gives you a very handy telephoto camera and the image stabilization works very well on the long focus end too. Last weekend with this camera, I easily took some nice pictures of two bears far far away from me. Most of other HD camcorders only have 10x lens.
All the button and menu are well designed. It’s very easy to use and I don’t even need to read the manual. LCD panel is in good size too.
Canon Face Detection is also a very nice feature. The same high quality Face Detection technology used in Canon digital cameras is now available in Canon High Definition camcorders. Up to 35 faces can be detected automatically, and 9 detection frames can be displayed at one time. Face Detection ensures razor-sharp focus and natural, accurate exposure of the chosen subjects.
Okay, let me also mention some cons. First, like one of the other reviewer said, the software coming with it sucks! It can only edit the original format from the camcorder and output to same format instead of other more popular formats. Thanks god the newest windows media player support the video files directly from the camcorder. You can just use the usb cable or pop the sd memory card into a card reader and copy all the .mts file into your computer and rename them into .m2ts, then by double clicking it windows media player opens it right away. However, windows movie maker can’t handle them, and you can upload .m2ts file to youtube.com but the sound of the video will be cut off after a couple of seconds. So if you want to edit your videos and share your videos, probably you need buy a converting software like total video converter
One thing I forgot to mention, Its twin brother canon HF20 has exactly all the same configuration as HF200 except with 32GB interal memory. However HF20 is almost 200 bucks more expensive than HF200. Now the SD memory card is so cheap. I suggest you to buy HF200 with a 16GB or 32GB SD card. Just don’t forget to use class 4 or up SD card.
To summarize, overall it’s the best entry level HD camcorder. With the price drop alert subscription from www.pricetrace.com, I got it from amazon.com for only $560.5. It is worth every penny.
