Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2

With 10x optical zoom, you have an advantage in shooting both stills and videos. Unfortunately the image stabilization doesn't complement the zoom level too well, which results in some shaky footage. This is especially evident when viewing HD content on a big-screen HDTV.

Speaking of which, Sanyo has done a smart job of including a set of component cables as well as an HDMI cable for direct connectivity to HDTVs. I suspect the bundled HDMI cable will be a great selling point for a lot of consumers.

The HD2 camcorder gave us mixed performance results. In the daytime, it completely shone with its constantly smooth framerate and great image quality when shooting in 720p resolution.

I've taken a few screenshots of the videos I shot with it, and as you can see from the examples, the HD2 loves the sun. As long as there's ample light around, you'll get some great exposure and colors.

It did justice to all the colors I threw at it. It did add a bit of saturation from its own end but that helped keep the picture lively.

The HD2 suffers the classic camcorder problem of slow focusing when hand-held. Still, it wasn't as bad as with many other cameras – it took only a couple of seconds before it got its focus right. In dark areas it obviously took longer, but still wasn't slow enough to be a problem.

Capturing subjects in motion was a cinch with the HD2. Besides the lack of optical image stabilization, once I had the camera mounted on a tripod, it was pretty much set from there.

Shooting at night was a nightmare. Shooting in night portrait mode really didn't do much to brighten up the image; moreover the increased ISO filled the image with high levels of digital noise. But it wasn't as bad as shooting in High Sensitivity mode, which practically obliterated the picture quality with noise.

I tried testing the high-sensitivity mode in still images as well, to judge how well it performs there. Though the quality was a bit better, it was still pretty much disastrous. So keep this one home at night.

Audio is recorded in stereo though the mics placed on the back of the LCD screen. Though the quality of audio was very crisp and clear, the stereo mic placement seemed pointless as there was no channel separation evident in the recorded video.

Startup took around 3 seconds, which is not too bad for a camcorder, but video-to-video record times would be a lot more. You can record up to 14.5 minutes of HD video on a 1GB SD card. Recording in standard definition can increase that to over 40 minutes.

The Sanyo Xacti HD2 sells at an MRP of Rs 39,990. It sounds like a lot for a consumer camcorder, but considering that it records in high-def and is a fully functional camera as well, it's not too bad. Even with the flaws, there's a lot going for the HD2 that puts it above a lot of other commercial camcorders. As long as you're not a night owl, it will serve you well on your sunny vacations.