Sony HDR-SR12E

The compound for Sony’s fresh SR12 camcorder is simple: booty aftermost year's chart-topping SR8, add added megapixels, added gigabytes, a beyond awning and a best zoom, again top it all off with an bigger sensor and added good processor. The result? The SR8 on heat.

With a 120GB adamantine drive on lath it can shoot abounding 1920x1080i HD video at top affection for an absurd 15 hours. You'd charge thirty MiniDV tapes or 15 8GB anamnesis cards to bout it. If your home cine memories are of the band acid out aloof as it came to alarming out the candles, this is the camcorder for you.

Spoilt for choice

The baby downside is accepting to adapt bottomward 15 hours of apparent boner into article watchable. Thankfully AVCHD isn't the monster architecture it already was and bestcomputer application bales will cope, but you'll still charge a adequately hardcore PC to crisis all those frames. Already it's on your machine, Sony makes it a pain-free acquaintance to bake up to an hour's AVCHD to plain-old DVD for watching august hi-def on a PS3 or committed Blu-ray spinner.

The SR12 looks abundant and is a champ in activity too. From the solid body to the well-concealed doors that adumbrate the headphone, mic, USB, HDMI and component-out ports, it oozes quality. You additionally get a hot-shoe for adhering Sony mics and video lights and a lens cilia for blame on lens adaptors.

Intuitive controls

The controls are able-bodied laid out. Sony's touchscreen airheaded and cam ascendancy punch still booty accepting acclimated to but, already mastered, you can absolutely alpha to see the benefits. The awning is now an envy-inducing 3.2in with a additional res to match, authoritative it one of the best camcorders about for reviewing footage on the fly.

The SR12 isn't the aboriginal 'corder money can shop for but it sits able-bodied in the hand. In activity we appropriately lined up shots on the behemothic awning while acquainted with cooing acknowledgment anniversary time the face ascertain spotted a mug in attempt and drew a box annular it. Good camcorder.

Stay focussed

It may be the fresh 12x zoom or it may aloof be our poor luck, but the SR12 seems to attempt a tad added in the auto focus administration than antecedent Sony camcorders. It's not the affliction we've seen, aloof not absolutely what we've appear to apprehend from Sony.

That aside, the footage it pulls is annihilation abbreviate of fantastic. Sony’s alone in a fresh CMOS sensor and included the aforementioned Exmor and Bionz babble abridgement tech it uses on its top-line DSLRs. Video is aciculate and the colours fantastic. Ugly agenda babble is all but abandoned and alike in low-light the Sony now comes out fighting. Still photos don't absolutely alive up to the 10.2MP announcement but again stills aren't absolutely what this cam is about.

We'll accession a baby banderole too about the 5.1 beleaguer audio, which incidentally alone comes beyond as stereo if you playback anon from the camera to your TV. It doesn't absolutely bout the beleaguer we've heard from Panasonic and tends to aces up a tad too abundant of the accomplishments back the lens is at its widest, but you can consistently about-face the 5.1 off.

But these are accessory issues – the SR12 is a thoroughly able effort. To say that the account affection is acutely added good than aftermost year's SR8 is austere attestation to the assignment Sony's done. Is it the best customer camcorder of 2008? Let's aloof say it'll booty an abominable lot to exhausted it.