Sony DCR-SR300 Camcorder Reviewby Michael PerlmanPublished on May 16, 2007 3:28 PM
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Ease of Use(7.5)
Sonys are the easiest to use, generally, thanks in large part to the Easy button, located on the inside of the LCD cavity. Big and blue, the Easy button could be spotted by your dog, and shifts the whole camcorder into an idiot-proof mode. The onscreen buttons double in size and manual controls take a hike. This is full auto pilot we’re talking about here, and that’s why Sony camcorders are a hit amongst families and novices.
When you first power on the SR300 (Review, Specs, $761.95) and begin wading through the menu, you will be treated to an amalgamation of aural magic—we’re talking about Sony’s soothing camera beeps. While most manufacturers have a tendency to opt for grating, piercing menu sounds, Sony took into account the concept of sound therapy, and your shooting experience will be laced with mysticism and wonder.
In addition, the SR300 is simple. There are minimal ports, buttons, dials, and switches, as the SR300 is extending an arm, or lens, to vacation-prone families across the tourist-ridden US of A. Even the docking station offers only an additional USB port, and that’s about it. The SR300 eliminates the need for an external lens cap with its automatic retractable lens cover and sports a veritable line of function buttons in the LCD cavity (Backlight, Easy, etc.). In this case, the SR300 is hard to screw up, even for Dad. On the other hand, the lack of intermediate features will deter the avid low-budget filmmaker or event documenter. No mic or headphone jack reduces any audio monitoring or recording to the built-in microphone only, which is not the best means for capturing optimal sound.
Now let’s talk menu. Yes, it’s a touch screen. The power lies at your fingertips. The buttons are evenly spread out, and everything is labeled, keeping you out of the dark. If you don’t feel like pressing the onscreen home button, there is one right next to it on the LCD panel. This sounds great, but too bad the buttons are the size of a pen cap’s diameter. Those who don’t have leprechaun hands may experience some difficulty pressing the buttons. The HDR-UX1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $729.95) has a 3.5” LCD screen (versus 2.7” on the DCR-SR300 (Review, Specs, $761.95)), which made a huge difference in LCD screen buttons.
Handling (5.5)
In the land of consumer camcorders, the size of your hand greatly affects your shooting experience. Vertical models like the Canon HV10 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $814) and Panasonic SDR-S150 (Review, Specs, $699.95) require the shooter to conform to a condensed layout of controls, while beasts like the JVC GZ-HD7 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1529) allow plenty of breathing room. Nevertheless, the Sony DCR-SR300 falls between the extremes and ranks in size amongst the Canon HV20 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $903) and Sony HDR-HC7 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1128.56).
The most notable difference, though, is the SR300’s rounded right side and top finger groove. This design will most likely suit those with smaller hands—the thumb will rest above the record start/stop button, the index finger will lay on top of the zoom lever, the middle and ring fingers will fit in the groove, and the pinky will just fall short of the built-in microphone. However, anyone with a glove size larger than a medium will probably find their fingertips flush with the edge of the left side. In this case, the hand must be shifted down on the SR300, offsetting the leveling of the lens. Of course, a great deal of point-and-shooters will not even use the hand strap at all and cup the bottom of the SR300 in their right hand while manning the LCD panel with their left.
The problem with the SR300’s finger grooves is that they’re ineffective. The Panasonic HDC-SD1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1119.99) has a rubberized strip on the top, catching the fingers comfortably. The SR300’s groove is bare plastic, and that doesn’t mix well with sweaty fingers on a balmy day. In addition, the SR300’s hand strap is not the best. The one found on the HDR-HC7 is far superior, and the JVC GZ-HD7’s is untouchable—fully padded, mesh interior, think, and just plain comfortable. The SR300’s feels like cheap, fake plastic against the back of your hand, but then again it’s not as bad as most Canon hand straps. Once you look beyond the SR300’s flaws and slip it over your hand, you’ll notice that it’s not a bowling ball, yet not a feather. It’s an average weight for a camcorder (1 lb. 3 oz.), and it won’t impede the shooting itinerary.
What will throw a stick in the spokes is navigating through the touch screen menu. Again, those with larger hands will be shafted here. The buttons on the menu are so small that numerous presses are required to select a desired function. In addition, once a manual or automatic control is selected in the function menu, the menu disappears, forcing you to revisit the menu every time an adjustment needs to be made. Using the spot focus is exceedingly frustrating because the 2.7” LCD screen can only show so much. Attempting to focus tiny rectangles on a noisy screen is not our idea of fun. If you’re going to equip a camcorder with a touch screen interface, at least make the LCD a big one, like the Sony HDR-SR1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1119.99)’s 3.5” inch monster. Time and patience suffer here, unless you slip the SR300 into Easy mode where the buttons mutate to double their size and the shooter’s only responsibility is to hit record.
Menu (6.5)
The DCR-SR300’s menu uses the blueprints from last year’s HDR-UX1’s. Rather than the single long, scrolling list of option (as in the HDR-HC7), the menu works on a series of tabs. To put it more simply, the HD7-style menu is narrow and deep, the SR300 menu is shallow and wide. The latter approach is a bit better, all told. Sony clearly did their research on this one. The major failing point is the speed at which menus appear. It’s 2007 and you just dropped a grand on a camcorder – there should be no delays from one menu screen to the next.
The menus are broken down into a home screen button, options button, and the accompaniment of magical sounds. The HDR-UX1 from last year had bigger, 3.5 inch LCD screen, which makes it easier to navigate through its menu. The good news about the SR300’s menu is that it’s fairly idiot-proof. Almost every selection or icon is labeled with a brief description of its purpose. The button response time is quick—once you successfully fit your finger within its tiny rectangular frame. Although touch screens tend to smudge up the LCD, consumers adore them for their ease of use and instant power right at their fingertips. While Panasonics and most Canons take the throne with their rear-mounted menu navigation, Sony’s touch screen can be overlooked when compared to Hitachi’s free-for-all menu button cluster.
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The Home menu |
The function menu |
When you fire up the SR300, you’ll notice three distinct rectangular buttons. The home button sits in the top left corner, playback is located in the bottom left corner, and the options, or function menu lives in the bottom right corner. Sony must have kept these buttons smaller to avoid cluttering the LCD screen like Sony’s VPC-HD2 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $585.36) icon explosion, in addition to maintaining proportion. Now let’s begin our menu quest by going home first.
Pressing the home button brings up a screen with a horizontal row of icons spread out in tabs along the bottom: camera, view images, others, manage HDD/memory, and settings. Camera lets you switch between movie and photo mode and also offers the smooth slow record feature. The view images tab lets you view your recorded stills in an index (playback menu) or playlist. In others, you can delete and edit HDD content and playlists, print, and access the computer connection. Others is a bit of a grab bag, and the fact that it’s placed in the middle is odd. You’ll begin to see that Sony’s menu scheme sometimes makes less sense than the way a Canon or Panasonic operates. In the memory tab, you can format the HDD or a MemoryStick PRO Duo, and check up on the HDD’s stats by pressing the info button. Settings is a little more helpful. Here you have your movie, photo, view images, sound/display, output, clock/language, and general settings. You’ll be using movie settings the most while in home, and here you have access to the record mode, NightShot light, digital zoom, SteadyShot, auto slow shutter, guideframe, zebra stripes, remaining time setting, flash level, and red eye reduction.
Now on to the options, or function menu. When you press the minute icon in the bottom right corner, a similar menu screen pops up, but here are all your automatic and manual controls within a series of five tabs: focus, spot focus, tele macro, exposure, spot meter, scene selection (program AEs), white balance, color slow shutter, and Super NightShot. The fourth tab contains the fader, digital effect, and picture effects, and the last tab lets you choose the record quality, still media allocation, and microphone level. A couple grievances we had with Sony’s touch screen menu pertained to adjusting manual controls. Although the accuracy is decent, it is a royal pain to fiddle with tiny buttons, especially on the go. Panasonics will treat you well, and even Sony’s HC7 has a cam control dial. It was not fun bumbling through the exposure and focus. In addition, once a manual control is selected, you go right back to the startup screen, forcing you to revisit the function menu each time you’d like to add another manual control. This menu was designed for Easy mode users, all the way.
Portability (5.5)
The DCR-SR300 is a solid brick of vacation-capturing technology, measuring a modest 76mm x 78mm x 149mm (3 in. x 3 1/8 in. x 5 7/8 in.) including all projecting parts, like the SR300’s junk in the trunk battery. Weighing in at 560g (1 lb. 3 oz.), the SR300 is no feathery Sanyo Xacti, yet it won’t conquer the interior of your camera bag to a preposterous extent like the Panasonic HDC-DX1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1119.99) will. This camcorder is rugged and will withstand a hearty beating—just nothing too abusive. The SR300 sports a 40GB HDD that offers 570 minutes of recording time in the highest quality (HQ) setting, yet it’s coupled with a battery that has a maximum continuous recording time of 95 minutes in HQ. Of course, Sony is stretching that number like taffy, while the typical recording time is a mere 45 minutes with stopping, starting, using the menu, etc. The diagnosis: an additional battery…or three.
The 2.7" (221K) LCD. There is no viewfinder.
LCD and Viewfinder (7.0)
The SR300 has a 2.7” wide LCD screen with a 200K pixel resolution. The LCD screen flips out 90 degrees and can be rotated a full 270 degrees. The image displays a balanced color palette, yet is rife with noise. This is too bad, because the SR300 does not have a viewfinder for an alternate view and prolonged battery life. The LCD panel features a vertical row of controls on the left, consisting of the home, zoom in/out, and record start/stop buttons. The LCD hinge is not unlike any other consumer camcorder: flexible, thin, and easily breakable.
Sony LCD screens are a hit amongst the consumer crowd for their easy touch screen navigation, yet to us they remain a bittersweet phenomenon. It’s great to have the power of adjustment beneath your fingertips, but when the buttons are so small in size, using the manual focus slider becomes a foreboding task. In Easy mode the buttons double in size, but manual control fanatics will be out of luck. The Sony HDR-UX1 comes equipped 
with an LCD screen that measures a whopping 3.5 inches—in this case, the interface is a bit more manageable. The SR300’s LCD screen has the potential to vex and fluster those with hands bigger than a woodland sprite. On another note, the LCD screen has a tendency to smudge up due natural oils produced by skin. Using the spot focus becomes virtually useless when the screen is a cloudy fiasco. We prefer Panasonic’s rear mounted joystick design.
Battery Life (11.4)
We tested the Sony DCR-SR300's NP-FH60 rechargeable battery pack by setting it to full manual mode and recording continuously until the battery was cashed. The SR300 had a battery life of 113 minutes and 51 seconds, which is pretty decent. Sony claims the SR300 gets a good 45 minutes of life during typical recording time, so expect a number in between when you take it for long hikes.