Design
Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons once preached about the nine tenants of constancy; one can only imagine that a smattering of Sony's camcorder designers were in attendance that day, as the new Sony Handycam HDR-XR200V is remarkably like the mid-range high-def Handycams that have come before it, the SR10 and the SR5.
Sure the colours and some of the minor details have changed, but the essentials are the same. The XR200V now has a much darker hue, with dark metal adorning the lens ring and the top of the camera. As before, all the covers, especially the one hiding the hotshoe, slide back and away with the smoothness and alacrity of a device that costs as much as 316 medium double cheeseburger meals. Weighing about 470g with the supplied battery, the XR200V feels solid and weighty in the hand.
The major changes, if you could call them that, are a hand grip that no longer rises towards the rear and the combination power/mode dial being told that "it's time to go". With the power button now residing on the inside of the LCD's screen cubby hole, the Quick On button has also been given the heave-ho. The XR200V switches on automatically whenever you flip the screen out. It switches off again automatically when you close the screen unless, of course, you're recording; start up takes a squeak under three seconds.
Measuring 2.7 inches across diagonally, the flip-out touchscreen LCD features the same 211k pixel unit seen on the SR10 and is the only method setting up the camera. Configuration and settings are still split between two different menu structures. More commonly used settings, such as white balance, manual focus, macro mode, scene selection, recording quality and the like, reside in a set of menus accessed by an on-screen settings button that resides in the bottom right corner of the screen. Other, less commonly used settings, such as switching between HD and SD recording, image stabilisation mode, X.V. Colour and so forth, reside in the config menu accessed via the home menu in the top left corner.
Features
Residing in the LCD screen's hidey-hole are a clutch of buttons familiar to Handycam users — display, playback, infrared Nightshot mode, one-touch disc burning, and an Easy mode that removes almost all manual control. Joining them is a toggle switch for the GPS antenna; with the antenna on videos automatically tagged with your GPS location, although, like the majority of car sat nav systems, this feature only works when you're outdoors. The antenna's inclusion allows for video searching by location, in addition to the existing keyframe, face and recording sequence based searches. Any geotagged video is displayed as a red pin on a world map, which includes major roads and location names for the US, Canada, the UK, western Europe, Japan and, of course, Australia and New Zealand. Pity then that this map mode is hidden behind a maze of menu items.
Like many of its ilk the standard 5.1-channel surround sound mic is highly sensitive to the merest breath of air. Mini-HDMI, AV and component out ports are also provided so audio visual masterpieces can be quickly reviewed on a TV although, to our continued chagrin, no mini-HDMI cable is provided.
We have mixed feelings about Sony doing away with the dock used in previous models. On the one hand it was a nice way of reducing cable clutter or loss, but with most of its ports and functions already available on the camera, it was a wee bit redundant. We're less ambiguous about the now departed remote control — hooray! Features we'd deem mandatory in a AU$2000 camera, such as an electronic viewfinder and Sony's excellent manual control dial, are all notable for their absence, however.
There are a few features nicked from still cameras, such as face detection and smile shutter. The latter, with its ability to automatically snap still photos of anyone smiling while you're recording video, seems rather well suited to the realm of camcorders. A 30-day trial of Sony's AU$289 Vegas Movie Studio 9 Platinum video editing suite is included as part of the package, and is an adequate alternative for Cecil B. DeMille-wannabes unwilling to fork out for either Adobe Premiere or Apple's Final Cut.
Performance
As with almost every other self-respecting camcorder these days, the XR200V can record both still images and video on to removable flash memory — in this case Sony's proprietary MemoryStick Pro Duos — as well as its 120GB hard disk. Capturing videos at 1920x1080i, the hard disk is capable of holding up to 870 minutes of footage at the highest quality setting. Like all hard-disk camcorders though, the battery will run out of juice well before the hard disk fills up, with the supplied battery rated at 100 minutes.
Sharing a 2.3-megapixel sensor (only 1.5 megapixels of which are used while recording) with the HDR-XR100, as well as the outgoing SR10, video quality from XR200V is good but not quite as pin sharp as we'd expect from a camera retailing for the best part of AU$2k. Part of the reason for this may lie with the less than stellar 16Mbps bitrate, well behind the 24Mbps rate offered by Canon. Colour reproduction is OK, although probably a tad too muted for most tastes. Barely qualifying as passable are the XR200V's still photos. Despite boasting "4-megapixel" resolution, image quality is little better than a standard camera phone's. Worse though is Sony insistence on interpolating stills up to the required megapixel spec — a little trick that, in the annals of tech trickery, ranks alongside digital zoom.
By far the biggest selling point of this camcorder is that it is the cheapest Handycam available with Sony's new active image stabilisation system — dubbed Optical Active Steadyshot, for which the packaging proudly boasts it's up to 10 times easier to hold in your hand. We shot viewable handheld footage on foot and on a bus, situations that would normally render video unwatchable, even for the most die-hard fans of The Blair Witch Project — check out our video review for a demonstration. While at maximum zoom (15x optical) handheld video bordered on actually being watchable.
Sticklers will notice a slightly unnatural feeling to the active image stabilisation system. For instance, if you pan across a scene and stop abruptly, the image will appear to float for a split second before coming to a rest. This quibble aside though, the new image stabilisation system is a boon, as it removes all but the biggest of twitches, it allows lengthy handheld videos to be shot without the fear that viewers will need a doggy bag for company.
Conclusion
It's the active image stabilisation system that finally makes shooting lengthy handheld movies or on-the-go videos a viable option, which elevates this camera from average to good. If you intend to attach your video camera to a tripod for a majority of the time and can live without the GPS, there are sharper, and potentially cheaper, options out there though.
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