Sony HDR-CX500V

Handling (7.00)

Despite being smaller than most high-end models, the HDR-CX500V isn’t the most comfortable camcorder to hold. Its right-side design is a bit bumpy and could definitely provide a more ergonomic fit to the face of your palm. Still, the camcorder does feel more comfortable than the bulky Sony HDR-XR520V. In its defense, the CX500V does have a hearty construction, well-placed buttons, and excellent port-covers. The camcorder also features a comfortable hand strap that provides good support and a larger-than-average LCD.

Our biggest disappointment with the HDR-CX500V is its control dial, which is much worse than the front-mounted dials featured on last year’s Sonys as well as on the HDR-XR520V and XR500V. First of all, the dial is located near the back of the camcorder, which makes it awkward to adjust while you shoot. With a front-mounted dial or lens ring your second hand can be used to balance the camcorder while you make adjustments. On the CX500V, your left hand is either blocking the LCD or awkwardly holding the left side of the camcorder when you rotate the control dial.

The control dial is also much thinner than any of the dials featured on other camcorders (it is about 1/4 as thick as the dial found on the Canon HF S11, JVC GZ-HM400, or Sony HDR-XR520V). This means your fingertips have less surface area to latch onto while making adjustments. We understand that the HDR-CX500V is meant to be as compact as possible, but why couldn’t Sony have made the dial just a bit thicker? There’s also definitely space for the dial up front, which begs the question as to why Sony even moved and altered the dial in the first place?

One benefit of Sony’s control dial is that you don’t have to go into the main menu system to set what the dial can control (you have choices for controlling focus, exposure, AE Shift, and WB Shift). If you hold down the manual adjustment button (next to the dial) for a few seconds a menu pops up that allows you to select what function you want the dial to control. This type of quick-access system is not available with Canon’s control dial. Other than this, however, we’re not crazy about Sony’s manual dial and we hope this thinner, rear-mounted design is a one-time thing.

All in all, we weren’t very impressed with the HDR-CX500V’s handling. Yes, Sony made a very small high-end camcorder, but it faltered when it comes to the control dial and menu navigation system. The new menus do look stylish, and we do like how they are all located under one heading, but the navigation controls are tricky to use until you get the hang of them. We do applaud Sony for including its customizable menu, however.

Portability (7.23)

The HDR-CX500V is pretty small for a high-end model. It is a lot smaller than the Canon HF S11, JVC GZ-HM400, and Panasonic HDC-TM300, although it isn’t much lighter than those three camcorders. The CX500V is also significantly lighter and more compact than its hard-drive-based cousin-model, the Sony HDR-XR520V. Despite this, the CX500V is still too large to carry around in your pocket—unless you have really loose pockets and don’t mind slipping a one-pound camcorder inside.

The 32GB of internal flash memory located inside the camcorder help make it a more portable product. You don’t have to worry about bringing along memory cards (unless the internal memory is full), and it is also good to have as a backup if you fill up the memory cards you do have. Sony also made improvements over last year’s models by not including a docking station with the HDR-CX500V. All of the camcorder’s ports are located right on its body, which means you don’t have to bring along an extra adapter or dock just so you can connect the camcorder to a computer or television. The fact that Sony uses a proprietary connection for its AV-out port is a little annoying, as it means you need to bring that cable with you whenever you want to connect the camcorder to a regular television—which does limit the CX500V’s portability a tad.

Battery Life (6.50)

The Sony HDR-CX500V managed a surprisingly good battery life in our test. The camcorder, with its supplied battery pack, lasted for 2 hours and 10 minutes (130 minutes) in our battery life test. This is a good 25 minutes longer than the Panasonic HDC-TM300 lasted and roughly 30 minutes longer than the Canon HF S11. The JVC GZ-HM400, however, takes the prize with this test—it went for 2 hours and 43 minutes (163 minutes). More on how we test battery life.

The CX500V does have an open-ended battery compartment, which means you can load larger battery packs into the camcorder for longer-lasting performance. Most high-end camcorders have this option, while numerous compact or mid-range models offer an enclosed battery compartment that cannot accommodate larger packs.

LCD (8.00)

At 3-inches in size, the HDR-CX500V has a larger than average LCD. The screen has a 230,400-pixel resolution, which also slightly higher than average. Most camcorders have a standard 2.7-inch screen, so the extra size on the HDR-CX500V is quite a blessing. The extra screen space really helps out, especially since you have to use the touchscreen system to do so many things on the camcorder. We applaud Sony for including a larger LCD screen on the CX500V, while most manufacturers seem afraid to crack the 2.7-inch barrier. Still, the HDR-CX500V’s screen is smaller than the 3.2-inch, 921,000-pixel LCD featured on Sony’s HDR-XR520V and HDR-XR500V.

The CX500V does not include an electronic viewfinder, which is something that is becoming less common to find—even on high-end consumer camcorders. So, the LCD screen is your only choice for framing your image. The LCD has manual brightness settings (with 32 increments), manual color controls (with 16 increments), and the backlight level can be set to either normal or bright. These settings can be useful for trying to combat glare or averse lighting conditions, but fiddling with them can reduce the battery life for the camcorder.

Feature	Sony HDR-CX500V	Panasonic HDC-TM300	Canon Vixia HF S11	JVC GZ-HM400
Display Size	3.0 in.	2.7 in.	2.7 in.	2.8 in.
Display Resolution	230400 pixels	230400 pixels	211000 pixels	207000 pixels
Touch Screen	✓	✓	✗	✗
Viewfinder	✗	✓	✗	✗

Stabilization (12.15)

Sony has done very well in our stabilization tests this year, and the HDR-CX500V is one of the very best when it comes to stabilization. The camcorder managed to reduce 80% of the unwanted motion in our low shake test and 84% of the shake in our high shake test. These are impeccable numbers, particularly for a fairly compact camcorder like the CX500V. The camcorder is equipped with optical image stabilization and it offers two settings: Standard and Active. In our testing, we got nearly identical results when using the two modes. More on how we test stabilization.

The graphs above show how well the camcorder’s stabilization system works. The blue lines represent the HDR-CX500V’s motion with stabilization off, while the orange lines show the camcorder’s motion with stabilization engaged. You can see the camcorder produced slightly more vertical (y-axis) motion with stabilization turned on, but the horizontal (x-axis) movement was greatly decreased. In the video below you can see the CX500V’s stabilization in action. The camcorder did appear to have some trouble keeping focus during our stabilization test, which you should be able to see in the video below.

According to Sony, the Active stabilization mode on the CX500V should help correct rolling or tilting movement of the camcorder. We also noticed the camcorder’s wide angle changes slightly when Active mode is engaged (the image zooms in just a bit). This suggests Active mode uses a digital stabilization system to enhance the optical stabilization, although we’re not sure about this. What we do know is that Active mode did nothing to improve the HDR-CX500V’s stabilization results in our test.