Manufacturer: Panasonic
Supplier: Wilkinson
Price: £153 (£180 inc VAT)
Rating: 5/6
Panasonic’s contribution to the compact video camera revolution is the undeniably cute SDR-S7. It might look like a full-sized camcorder, but in fact, it’s considerably smaller than the MX20, and about half the size of the average camcorder.
It looks more like a toy than a serious piece of technology, so it comes as some surprise to discover that, like the MX20, it’s bursting with advanced features. It has a 10x optical zoom lens – not quite up to the same level as the Samsung, but still impressive. It has electronic image stabilisation, stereo audio recording, zoom mic and wind cut features, too.
Just like the MX20, it records to a TV-friendly resolution of 720 x 576i in MPEG2 format at a top bit-rate of 10Mb/sec, which lets you store around 1hr 40mins on an 8GB
SDHC flash card, although you’ll need to buy one separately, but what really impresses with the SDR-S7 is its performance. Compared even with the larger MX20, the Panasonic produces markedly better all-round results.
In particular, low-light performance is far more impressive, but it also focuses more quickly, making footage far cleaner and more usable.
The only gripe we have is that the ergonomics are a little suspect – with the screen flipped out, the lack of joystick next to the screen makes navigating the settings and playback menus awkward.
But this is a small complaint, and although the Panasonic is a little more expensive than the MX20, we feel it’s a small price to pay for superior video quality and more compact dimensions.
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