Sanyo VPC-FH1EBK Full HD Dual Video - Black

I was looking for a small full-HD camcorder and the Sanyo VPC-FH1 seemed to fit the bill.

The sister camera to this one (the VPC HD2000) initially looked more attractive with it's 'Raygun' styling, but having tried this out in a store I found it really didn't work for me, preferring the more conventional size and shape of the VPC-FH1.

The camera really is amazingly compact (and light) for its specification, but feels surprisingly sturdy nonetheless and I have to say that the video quality really is very good.

The joystick operated menu system works reasonably well and the lcd screen is clear and informative.

The 8 Megapixel photos are fairly good, although don't expect the kind of quality you can get from a good DSLR - they certainly weren't up to the quality of those from my 8 Megapixel Canon 350D, not being able to cope with low light as well, and some were fractionally out of focus (again, mostly in low light), although you can use the built-in flash if you wish.

The ability to take a photo whilst videoing is nice, but bear in mind the resolution of this will be just 2 Megapixels (I guess the photo uses up the remainder of the CCD sensor frame not used for the video).

The one thing I would really criticise, however, is the anti-shake mechanism. If you are using any amount of zoom it really doesn't work very well at all - it would have been much better if Sanyo had implemented an optical anti-shake rather than a digital one.

If you are going to make full use of the higher resolution video modes bear in mind that this will really eat up storage and you will require some serious processing power on your PC if you want to edit it.

I am using the 1080i mode as this would be about the limit at which I could realistically edit footage (not that I've tried this yet) with my 2.4GHz Quad Core Desktop PC and also because it uses about half the storage space of the 1080P mode.

Video footage looks really great via an HDMI lead (not supplied) on my HD-Ready TV (although this is unfortunately not a full-HD model), but if you display this on a PC in Quicktime or iTunes you may notice some strange aliasing effects, probably as you are pushing these applications to their very limits and as the monitor resolution was not completely compatible with 1080i.

Audio quality is also good, with wind-noise being reasonably well surpressed, although this is only conventional stereo.

The use of an SDHC card for storage (make sure to use a Class 6 card for speed) is great - there's no noise when filming and you can just swap out the card for another one. 32GB cards are still expensive, but 16GB cards are now very cost effective.

It is fairly easy to transfer your videos and photos (stored as individual 'mp4' files) to a PC via the supplied USB cable, albeit that it can take a little while for the rather large HD video files.

A couple of neat features include the ability to connect the camera to an external hard drive on which you have stored videos / photos and use the camera as an interface (via an HDMI lead) to a HDTV to display them, controlling everything via the supplied remote control (although I haven't tried this yet).

Also, the camera can serve as an external 'PC camera' when connected to a PC via a USB cable - I have used this mode, in conjunction with suitable software on the PC (not supplied), to create stop-frame animation footage with my daughter (a rather expensive way of doing this perhaps!).

So all-in-all this is a very good HD camcorder, although there are a few areas that could still be improved upon.

This camcorder is really compact and video quality is superb, upgraded to this from a Sony DCR SR52 HDD and this is light years ahead in video quality.
Make sure you get a good quality SD card like the Sandisk Video HD version as the camcorder writes at high speeds.
Also beware of pricing as picked mine up for £349.99!

We bought this as an early Christmas present as we are travelling this year to see our son in Australia.
Lovely quality and easy to use, fantastic quality HD on our Sony HD TV, the hdmi mini lead isn't provided but worth the extra.
The size is very small but very robust, ideal for the traveller.
Need to use a lot more to give a full review but so far so good.

The only real niggle is that there is no extra software for the mac, i have a macbook and have had to invest in extra software - which can be expensive.

I think they should have thrown in a travel bag with it too, most cameras come with a protective bag these days.

DONT pay full price for the camera though, shop around on Amazon and elsewhere before buying, I paid much much less that the price quoted.