Sony HDR-PJ710 Camcorder Review

Low Light Sensitivity

Low light sensitivity was our biggest issue with last year's HDR-CX700V, so we're impressed by how well things have improved on this year's HDR-PJ710V. In our test, the PJ710V required 18 lux of light to illuminate our test chart when we used zoom on the camcorder, and it needed just 6 lux of light to illuminate the chart properly without zoom. While this isn't a fantastic performance, it's still very good, and the improvement compared to the CX700V should not be understated. More on how we test low light sensitivity.

Using the PJ710's 24p frame rate does improve low light sensitivity a bit, and it does so by letting the camcorder use a slower shutter speed. The numbers we obtained using the 24p frame rate are as such: 14 lux with zoom and 5 lux without zoom. So, you can expect to see a bit of an improvement using 24p compared to 60i/60p on the Sony HDR-PJ710V.

Low Light Noise

At 60 lux, which is the light level we use for our low light noise test, the Sony HDR-PJ710V showed very little noise. In fact, the numbers show the camcorder had identical noise levels in low light as it did in bright light—a very impressive showing for this new Sony Handycam. Most impressive is the fact that this camcorder averaged half the noise that the HDR-CX700V averaged last year. A strong improvement for Sony here. More on how we test low light noise.

Low Light Color

Much like we saw with our noise test, color accuracy results were unchanged for the Sony HDR-PJ710V from bright light to low light. We measured the color error at 4.51 for the camcorder in low light, which is just two hundredths of a point different from the bright light color results. The saturation level did drop a bit in low light, however, but the camcorder maintained a decent 78% saturation. This saturation result is better than last year's CX700V from Sony, and it's stronger than what we saw from most of the competition in this price range. More on how we test low light color.