Sony Handycam HDR-XR350V Camcorder Review

Color

There's no doubt that the HDR-XR350V is capable of producing vivid, pleasing colors in bright light conditions, but the camcorder only produced average results in terms of color accuracy. The XR350V registered a color error of 4.36 and a saturation level of 94.11% in our bright light test, which are decent results, but are definitely not top-notch numbers. More on how we test color.

Take a look at the Color Error Map above and you'll see the camcorder produced certain tones, mainly blues and purples, with exceptional accuracy. It was greens, yellows, and browns, however, that gave the HDR-XR350V trouble. One of the downsides of the camcorder is its lack of any manual color modes or controls, which means you're essentially stuck with the saturation levels and color tones you get in auto mode (an example of which you can see below).

All of the camcorders shown below were in the same range when it came to color accuracy performance. The saturation level produced by each model also fell somewhere between 85% and 95%. The difference, however, is that all the other models shown below (besides the XR350V) have some sort of color controls or settings that allow you to manually adjust colors slightly to your liking.

Even though the HDR-XR350V doesn't have the best color accuracy, we like the way its colors looked in our bright light test. Tones were deep and strong without appearing oversaturated or too dark. Take a look at our variety of sample images and comparisons to judge for yourself as to which model produced the best colors in this test.

Low Light Color

The HDR-XR350V showed a significant drop in color accuracy and saturation level when we tested its low light image, but it maintained a relatively decent image. We measured the color error at 5.92 and the saturation level at 69.07%, both of which are average scores for a mid-range camcorder. More on how we test low light color.

Looking at the Error Map above you can see the XR350V had trouble rendering most colors accurately in low light, although greens and yellows gave the camcorder the most problems. Looking at the comparison images below, however, you can see the HDR-XR350V produced a brighter image than the Canon HF M31 (although the two had similar color error scores and saturation levels).

Noise

The HDR-XR350 managed a strong performance in our noise test. The camcorder averaged 0.3825% noise in our bright light testing, which is slightly less noise than we measured on its higher-end cousin model, the Sony HDR-CX550V. More on how we test noise.

Looking at the cropped images above, you can see that the Sony HDR-XR350V didn't produce an image that looked quite as sharp as the competition. Although the camcorder didn't do a terrible job capturing detail, it simply was a few steps behind the rest of the pack in this category.