The incredibly low noise levels, clear and smooth motion, built-in GPS, and GB internal hard drive. Read Full Review. If the majority of your shooting is done in brighter conditions and you like the viewfinder and dial, despite some unintuitive operational quirks, the Sony HDR-XRV is a compelling choice in Engadget Reader. June 27, Dent , an hour ago. Twitter Facebook Reddit Mail. The best of CES Engadget's top picks from 12 categories, and our overall favorite from this year's show.
By Engadget , David Bowie's later albums have been remixed in Reality Audio They and a live album will be available to stream on January 21st. Zoom on the Sony HDR-XRV is operated via a traditional zoom toggle, mounted on the top of the camcorder where your index finger usually rests.
We found the position to be less than optimal for some hand sizes, but you don't have to strain to reach it. There are no fixed zoom speed settings, but the toggle reacts well to variable finger pressure, allowing you to achieve a good quick clip or an impressively slow crawl—especially if you have a steady finger. Unfortunately, there are no numerical labels on the zoom scale, making it difficult to produce the same shot twice. As with most high resolution camcorders, the optical zoom range is not overly impressive.
There is just a 12x optical zoom, which pales in comparison to the 60x and 70x optical zoom on some standard definition camcorders. On high end camcorders, however, 12x optical zoom is about average. When digital zoom is activated, there is a tiny line in the zoom scale that indicates the break between optical and digital zoom. Any amount of digital zoom can degrade your image, so we suggest you just leave the digital zoom turned off.
Focus can be manually adjusted using either the touch screen or the excellent manual control dial. We don't recommend using the touch screen, since you'll have to block a good portion of the view in order to make your adjustments.
It's also more difficult to stop at exactly the right focus level. The dial, on the other, is a buttery smooth control that will give you incredibly precise control. Whether you use the touch screen or the dial, the XR gives you a smooth, theoretically infinite number of focal choices: you're not constrained to a set number of increments like you are on some camcorders.
Some helpful numerical labels will give you an idea of where you are in the overall focal range, but it's not an exact measure. These labels mark the approximate distance, from 0.
If the full manual focus is too intimidating or too bothersome , you can utilize the touch screen spot focus. Using the touch screen to select the area you want in focus is often quicker than the camcorder's slow automatic focus and is often easier than trying to do a manual focus without the use of focus assist—a feature present on several camcorders from competing manufacturers. There are thirty possible increments—a good healthy amount for a consumer camcorder.
Exposure can be adjusted via the touch screen or the manual control dial. Unfortunately, the scale is not numbered. If you don't want to bother with full manual exposure operation, there are two choices for a simpler exposure adjustment.
The easiest and most useful is the touch screen spot metering, which lets you tap on the area of the screen that you want the camcorder to meter. Exposure will quickly adjust to light the image appropriately. This is very useful when you're trying to record high contrast scenes with unusual mixed lighting conditions. You can also leave the XR on full auto aperture and use the AE Shift tool to tweak overall brightness.
There are just nine increments to choose from in AE Shift, compared to the 30 steps available for manual exposure. Direct aperture control is a major missing link in Sony's quest to draw in experienced manual control aficionados. True, the exposure controls work well and give you plenty of options, but exposure has nothing to do with depth of field—something some videophiles find essential, even in a consumer camcorder.
This is a lamentable exclusion that has been a part of all the high def camcorders from Sony for years. Leaving shutter speed in the hands of auto controls can often result in blurry, trailing footage, when aperture, exposure, or gain could have come to the rescue.
On the other hand, not having the option to increase shutter speed can really hamper flexibility in low light. Every other major manufacturer allows some kind of shutter speed or aperture control. Why not Sony? There are very few white balance presets available on the XR, which doesn't really detract from the camcorder's value. The options are limited to auto, outdoor, indoor, and manual. Presets are rarely as accurate as a good manual white balance; fortunately, the Sony's manual white balance is easy and accurate.
As with last year's models, there are nine separate increments, allowing users a small degree of control over the color tone of their footage. WB Shift is one of the four options you can assign to the Manual dial. It used to be that gain was a rare setting for consumer camcorders anyway, but it's actually becoming increasingly prevalent.
No color depth, sharpness, etc. There is a handy white balance level adjust, which is rare for consumer camcorders. You can read more about that in the white balance section, above. While it is true the camcorder can capture x still photos, the XRV's gross pixel count is only 6.
The 6. The megapixel and 9-megapixel settings offer a larger-sized picture, but the same amount of pixels are going into the image, so the sharpness won't increase. For a full list of the camcorder's still image resolution options, see the table below.
The HDR-XRV has a small mode button on the right side of the camcorder that switches between photo and video modes. The shutter button on the top of the camcorder just behind the zoom toggle allows you to take still photos. Most of the manual controls that are available while shooting video also function while taking still photos. Spot focus and spot meter are still an option, as are adjustments to exposure, focus, WB shift, and AE shift.
Image stabilization can be turned on and off, although the active mode is not available for still photos.
A second self-timer can also be activated in photo mode. Tucked next to the lens on the front of the camcorder is a small flash that can be set to auto, on, and off.
The flash is equipped with a red-eye reduction feature that can be turned on or off, plus the intensity of the flash can be set to normal, high, or low. You can also use the nightshot light for still photography, by turning it on in the Photo Settings menu.
While actively recording, you can hold down the shutter button to snap a photo. Still images obtained using this method are automatically set to a resolution of x and a aspect ratio. During playback, still images can be digitally magnified up to 5x by using the zoom toggle. You can also use the camcorder's smile shutter feature to automatically capture still images whenever a smile is detected during video recording.
Or, you can go back into already recorded footage and capture low resolution stills in retrospect. In fact, the camcorder's color error of 3.
More on how we test still color. All the camcorders in this set take decent still photos, each producing fairly accurate colors and strong image sharpness. With these new, high-end HD camcorders that are loaded with effective pixels, camcorders are beginning to approach the same image quality you'd get from a dedicated still camera. We measured roughly 1. This is a bit higher than we'd like to see from an HD camcorder, especially one that has such good color accuracy and sharpness in its photos.
These are very good scores, and they are only exceeded by camcorders with higher effective pixel counts—like the Canon HF S, which can take 8-megapixel still images. More on how we test still sharpness. One of the main reasons that Sony remains popular is the small Easy button located within the LCD cavity. This button engages the XR's autopilot mode, which not only disables several menu options, but also enlarges the text and icons on the touch screen to make them easier to navigate.
Some might think that this is a shallow attempt at giving the illusion of ease of use, but Sony actually delivers.
The XR is easy to use in Easy mode and has good automatic controls to take the burden away from the user. If all you ever want to do is turn on the camera and record, the Sony will certainly get the job done. The playback interface has a couple of quirks that might cause a novice to stumble, but recording, watching, and transferring footage is very easy.
What can be difficult is navigating the half-scrolling, half-tabbed dual menu system. Even in Easy mode, the user is greeted by a number of mysterious icons. Getting anything done on the Sony feels more like trial and error than intuition. We have a lot of experience with a lot of different camcorders and we still made a number of wrong turns before arriving at our intended destinations.
Fortunately, the XR does offer some vague tool tips on about half of the options featured in the menus. There is also an optional Help feature, which activates a little pop-up every time you tap something in the Home menu. As for less experienced videographers that might want to dabble in more advanced manual image controls, thankfully, Sony has placed most of these options in a single place.
Most users will have no problem discovering the Option menu and trying out manual exposure or white balance. There is one final detail that may hamper ease of use: the unusual clutter of buttons crammed onto the body of the camcorder.
Even experienced users don't always like to see an array of buttons and switches jammed onto their personal electronics. There are just too many controls stuck inside that cavity: most of them assigned to options or features that are not accessible through the camcorder's menus. Just looking at that array would be enough to send first-time users scurrying in another direction. The added bulk of the hard drive has an excellent gripping texture and the protrusion on top gives your fingers something extra to grasp.
Even so, the camcorder is not overly comfortable in the hand. The leather hand strap is a nice size, but could use some extra padding or softness. We already mentioned the flurry of buttons inside the LCD cavity, but it bears mentioning one more time. Not only is their cluttered presence intimidating, but the buttons and switches themselves are not easy to activate.
The buttons are small and just recessed enough to be difficult. The low light modes switch is particularly finicky—not a feature you want to have on a switch you have to operate in the dark. This is also true of the tiny buttons on the LCD panel, which thick-thumbed videophiles might find to be a nuisance.
An obvious highlight of the XR's operation is the buttery smooth Manual dial, which can be set to control focus, exposure, white balance shift, or AE shift.
Unlike Canon's new dial, the Sony dials can switch operation on the fly, simply by pushing in on the front of the dial and holding down for a couple of seconds. This makes the dial a much more alluring feature, allowing users to get more out of their dial without navigating a maze of menus. What does the abbreviation 'MP' stand for?
MP stands for MegaPixels. What does DPI stand for? DPI stands for Dots Per Inch and is the number of ink droplets per inch that end up on the paper when printing. Can the battery of my Digital Camera explode? The camcorder really fares well in low light compared with all its competitors, maintaining a surprisingly sharp, saturated picture with only a modest amount of image noise.
Low Lux mode seems more intelligent than most low-light modes, only gaining up if necessary. Compared with the current class leaders, all from Canon, the low-light video looks more pleasing; though there's a touch more noise, it produces better midtone and shadow reproduction, for better perceived sharpness, and with more saturated colors.
However, none of them do a great job of maintaining white balance in low light. The audio sounds good as well, and the mic is sensitive, though it could really use a wind filter.
Still photos look OK, though as you'd expect at the touted megapixel resolution--interpolated up from the sensor's native 6 megapixels--photos look overprocessed with occasionally ugly edge artifacts. The 6-megapixel shots look better. However, they should all print decently up to 8x In their price class, you expect more prosumer-oriented manual controls. So despite being generally first-rate camcorders, you'll probably be just as happy with something a little cheaper.
Lori Grunin. The Good First-rate video quality and performance; geotagging videos is fun, if limited. Annoying menu system; no wind filter; no manual shutter-speed, iris, or audio controls; relatively big and heavy; expensive. Though their geotagging capabilities are mostly novelty and their interfaces could use a complete overhaul, the top-notch video quality, performance, and consumer-friendly feature sets of the Sony Handycam HDR-XRV and HDR-XRV make them worthy camcorder options.
Both are overpriced, but since 14 hours of recording time is plenty--especially if supplemented with flash media--the HDR-XRV is the better deal of the two. See full specs. Video Cameras Culture.
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