Sony Handycam DCR SR45

usability, portability, image quality, size, price

battery, viewfinder

77% of the reviews on Amazon.com give this product a positive rating.

Memory stick slot, 40x optical zoom, offers reasonable value for a HDD-based camcorder

Image quality slightly below par, poor still image mode

The Sony DCR-SR45 is a perfectly serviceable standard-def camcorder provided you only want to do the basics. While budget shoppers are sure to appreciate the user-friendly HDD technology, its image quality unfortunately failed to shine. An adequate...

Compact, lightweight build ; Stores video to 30GB hard drive or Memory Stick Pro Duo cards ; Touchscreen

Barely passable standard definition video quality ; No optical image stabilisation despite ultra-long lens ; Windows-only software

Conclusion The Sony Handycam DCR-SR45 is better than most entry-level HDD camcorders. Its compact, lightweight build is great for grab-and-go videos. The 30GB hard drive allows for plenty of storage, plus you can save video and stills to Memory Stick...

Compact, lightweight build; stores video to 30GB hard drive or Memory Stick Pro Duo cards; touch screen.

Barely passable standard-definition video quality; no optical image stabilization despite ultralong lens; Windows-only software.

The Sony Handycam DCR-SR45 has a good design and reasonable feature set for its price, but the video quality doesn't measure up to the rest of the package.

Compact, lightweight build; stores video to 30GB hard drive or Memory Stick Pro Duo cards; touch screen.

Barely passable standard-definition video quality; no optical image stabilization despite ultralong lens; Windows-only software.

The Sony Handycam DCR-SR45 has a good design and reasonable feature set for its price, but the video quality doesn't measure up to the rest of the package.

kompaktes, leichtes Gehäuse, 30-GByte-Festplatte und Flashspeicher, reaktionsfreudiger Touchscreen

kaum brauchbare SD-Videoqualität, keine optische Bildstabilisierung, ausschließlich Windows-kompatible Software

good price

downloading is a pain

Lots of zoom

Grainy picture indoors ; Weak colours

Excellent optical zoom 40x, infrared night shot, great sound quality, easy to copy to computer and DVD, compact, and cheap. Even with all the Cons still an excellent camera for the price

No night light for standard dark shots, no view finder as screen is hard to see in bright sunlight, manual focusing/whitebalance/etc uses lcd screen makes it hard to use and shaky, average quality still shots, no remote control, can't add text while...

the 40x optical zoom is very handy and the camera is very easy to use. The touch screen LCD was new for me having not had a camera with this before , but I find it quite user friendly and saves space on the camera body which means the camera is very...

the low light resolution on the video image is pretty grainy and Sony could really do with working on this. But if you aren't really a low light image quality snob, which I'm not, it's fine for home videos of the kids and so on and for holiday videos....