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Sony HandyCam DVD202E
Price: £599.99 inc VAT

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 06/06/2005
Featured in magazine:
Issue 109
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Sony
Web Address: www.sony.co.uk


Digital video is a wonderful way of capturing and saving life's memories, from baby's first steps to granny's 100th birthday. However, even with the best of intentions it takes a lot of discipline to get round to transferring your footage to your PC, editing it down to the core points of interest and saving it all for posterity in the format of your choice. This new camera from Sony records straight to DVD and offers simple editing without a PC.

Features
The camera is packed with top features. Like all Sony's optical devices, it has a superior Carl Zeiss lens that, in this case, comes with a 12x optical zoom (it'll go up to 480x if you're willing to put up with digital enhancement). Video can be recorded in true 16:9 widescreen – great if you've got a widescreen TV – and the unit has a 2.7in touch-screen LCD display attached, also in a widescreen ratio. Most interesting of all is that it records directly onto 8cm recordable DVD discs (+RW/-RW and –R formats) that can be transferred straight from the camera to a DVD player. What it can't do is easily transfer footage from camera to PC.

Performance
The device is more than capable of providing great-quality footage. Perhaps the best thing about it, if you're using DVD-RW discs, is that you can edit your movies as you go, splicing existing scenes into more than one for easily removing boring segments, and even rearranging the order scenes are played back in. This simple on-camera editing process cuts out the need to transfer footage onto a PC altogether, as long as you're happy connecting the camera to a VHS or DVD recorder to make copies of your movies.

Ease of use
Taking the PC out of the equation means the camera is mostly simple to use. The touch screen can be a little fiddly at times, but it's an improvement over the buttons and wheels often found on its non-touch screen rivals. And although there are undoubtedly more powerful functions available to those who'd rather edit on their computer, this is a great alternative for those looking for simple editing with a minimum of fuss.

Value for money
This is a reasonable price for a device that uses 8cm DVDs to record video, though it's also worth noting that a Sony-branded 30-minute DVD-RW costs £7 on Amazon, whereas the same retailer sells a pack of three Sony 60 minute Mini-DV tapes (the most popular digital video standard at present) for just £10. The same applies to cameras – you're likely to get better value for money if you opt for a Mini-DV camera. As seems to be the case with most top-brand digital video cameras, you can find some serious discounts if you shop around.

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