The camera itself does everything it promises, although its documentation is a bit confusing at times and its multitude of options can make it rather complex to operate for a novice camcorder user to start with. You really do need to spend a few hours with the manual playing with the machine to work out what all the features are, where to access them and how to use them best. I especially wanted low light recording and this camcorder has completely met my needs. You can go right down to 0 lux without disturbing your target.

Though the manual is reasonably laid out, it has suffered somewhat in the translation and can be confusing sometimes. Best thing to do is skim read it through once to get some feel for what the camcorder can do then go through it more thouroughly playing with the equipment at the same time. This does take a few hours, but is well worth it in the long run.

The camera itself seems solid enough, though I am not planning on dropping it to test it - it feels quite heavy and to get really steady recordings for the large telephoto settings you definitely need to use both hands to help support. This has then led to me inadvertently pressing some of the controls buttons dotted around the machine - but I think this will ease with familiarity.

USB connectivity to my PC worked first time and using the MPEG capture I have sent small movie clips of my son to distant relatives - excellent. Also the ability to drop stills on to the supplied memory stick from any movie is great - you can easily get the picture you want. My only gripe would be that the memory stick supplied was miniscule (4Mb) and they could easily have included a bigger one at not much cost. This means you cant store too much on it at once (4 pictures at highest resolution!). But Ive found it so useful that I am in the process of purchasing a larger one as we speak.

Both the internal viewer (black and white) and the lcd (2.5 inch) are superb quality and really easy to use. Maybe a tadge bigger would have been better - but that is only a minor niggle.

The suite of software supplied for still and video editing on the pc looks comprehensive though I havent needed to use it yet due to the features on the camcorder - in particular, the ability to combine stills, with either other stills or standard movies has proved to be be useful when sending the equivalent of cards through eMail, and the fade in/out options are really useful to produce professional looking videos.

I got the camcorder withen five days of ordering it which i was pleased with
The first thing that struck me about this camcorder was its weight and its ease of use.
A quick flick though the manual showed me the basics of how the camcorder operated in simple step by step diagrams.

This camcorder is loaded with features, 8 different picture effects, 7 different digital effects, old movie style being my personal favroite. Supersteady shot, 6 differnt faders, backlight. One of the best features is the nightshot fuction which is amazing, being able to film in complete darkness is something which is extremly useful.
18X optical zoom is usefull and 500x digtal comes in handy when you just want that extra bit more zoom.
The title generator is something which is nice and easy to use and adds that extra element of polish to the film, different colours, sizes and postions are all there for the perfectionist.

I thought i would never use the memroy stick facilites on the camcorder due to the differculty involved, but thats untill i tried it, the proccedue for saving a 30 second film onto memroy stick is so simple and easy to use. It takes about 2 minutes to recored a film from the tape onto memroy stick, then put it onto a computer,. I find myself e-mailing small videos all the time.
The abilty to take pictures via the camcorder is anouther bonus which is fun to use

The picture quilty is great, this is no doubt due to the mega pixed CCD which delivers rich vibrant colours which are sharp and defined.

Build quilty is great, something which you can expect from a sony product.

The camcorder is extremlly quiet, which means when filming the microphone dosent pick up any unwanted camcorder noise. something which i have come to expect with using a vhs camcorder for years.

Goodpoints
-Great picture quilty
-Amazing features
-Mpeg movie capibiltes
-Great build quilty

Badpoints
-Black and white veiwfinder
-No DV in
-Dosent have a 3 CCD