Compare Prices : Panasonic HDC SD9

Review summary: It's easy to be seduced by how light and comfortable the 11.5-ounce HDC-SD9-8GB camcorder ($699.95 direct) feels. In fact, it weighs less than comparably priced camcorders by more than four ounces; it achieves this by forgoing an integrated hard drive ...

Pros: Small form factor. Extremely lightweight. Dolby Digital 5.1 recording. Face detection.

Cons: Video quality is not as sharp as the competition. Struggles to adjust white balance when lighting changes. Mild purple fringing. Editing software is primitive. HDMI port is poorly placed.

Verdict: This camcorder is small and lightweight, but its video quality is below par.

Review summary: The HDC-SD9 is a joy to use and feels really good in your hand

Pros: Stylish design ; Solid build ; Impressive spec ; Compact ; Good picture quality

Cons: Awkward controls ; No microphone input

Verdict: Panasonic includes a reasonable selection of kit, including a composite cable, remote control, battery charger, power cable and a component cable. Our test footage was very satisfactory and, all in all, we were impressed by the reasonably priced HDC-SD9

Review summary: The Panasonic HDC-SD9 is one of the smallest and lightest full-size camcorders we've tested, and yet it still manages to pack in a good number of features -- you can even manually adjust aperture and shutter speed, which is unusual in this class

Pros: Compact and lightweight ; saturated colours

Cons: Moderate to low-light videos look cloudy ; some awkward design choices ; smallish LCD with terrible colour reproduction ; awful bundled software

Verdict: The Panasonic HDC-SD9's compact size is great and it's relatively inexpensive, which is always a good thing. But despite its trio of CCDs, the video quality and performance are too inconsistent for us to give it a full thumbs-up

Review summary: Prices of high-definition camcorders have steadily been dropping as a result of competition and maturing of the technology. The competition is fierce as major electronic manufacturers such as Canon, Hitachi, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung, Sanyo and Sony are ...

Verdict: The Panasonic HDC-SD9 Camcorder is an ideal high-definition camcorder for the beginner video enthusiast as illustrated by the recordings we produced for this article. And we certainly qualify as beginners since this was the first camcoder that we have ...