Camcorder News

September 26, 2007 – Sanyo is back with a new high definition camcorder in their Xacti line, the HD700 (US$599.99). Scheduled to begin shipping in the US at the end of October, it is touted to be the world’s smallest and lightest 720p camcorder. It features SD/SDHC memory card recording, a huge pixel count, and your choice of brown, red, or black body colors.

The HD700 is equipped with a huge 1/2.5" CCD, cramming in an excessive 7,380,000 pixels. While this yields a maximum still photo size of 3072 x 2304 (or an interpolated 3680 x 2760 image) in video mode, the effective pixel count is reduced to 4,080,000. The compact body has shortened the optical zoom to only 5x, one-half the zoom power of the lowest average zoom for a camcorder. The lens has an aperture range of f/3.5 – 4.7, with a focal range of 6.3 – 31.7mm (35mm equiv= 38 – 190mm).

The HD700 appears to be slightly smaller than the VPC-HD2, which also records 720p HD video. However, the new DMX-HD700 compresses in the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format rather than the MPEG-4 found in the VPC-HD2. Just yesterday, Toshiba announced four HD camcorders that will also use the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression, which offers more efficient storage and energy consumption.

The Sanyo Xacti line has always packed in a lot of still camera features. In addition to the high still resolution sizes, the new HD700 offers face detection (up to 12 faces at once), an ISO up to 3200, and a built-in flash.

The diminutive size of the HD700 will undoubtedly be its biggest selling point. In order to keep the slim design, most of the ports have been placed on a docking cradle, including HDMI, component-out, composite/S-Video-out, and USB. However, the camcorder is likely to suffer the same handling problems as the VPC-HD2, plagued by cramped rear-mounted controls and a frustrating menu interface.

Another boost to the HD700’s appeal is the inclusion of Adobe Premiere Elements 3.0 editing software, making this the most robust in-the-box software on the market. It may come as a disappointment to some, however, that Premiere Elements 3.0 was replaced just two days ago by version 4.0.

The Xacti HD700 camcorder retails for $599.99 and will begin shipping in Japan October 19th, and by the end of October in the U.S.