Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000

"It looks like a hairdryer!" was my 9 year-old daughter's first reaction when she saw this very unusual pocket camcorder from Sanyo, and the large lens perched on top of the handle looks a lot more like a hairdryer than something you'd use for recording video.  Perhaps the effect is deliberate, as the VPC-HD2000, at the top of Sanyo's Xacti range, sits perfectly in your hands.  Its combination of a powerful zoom, useful outputs and support for 1080p all make it an attractive option.

Handling

As with most other pocket camcorders, the HD2000 doesn't have a viewfinder but instead uses a bright LCD screen which you can reposition to get a good view.  Scrolling through the reasonably complete set of menus is done with a series of arrow keys, and you can adjust image quality and settings like white balance and focus. 

Although it's very compact, the HD2000 is heavy and bulky thanks to the large lens on top.  It's certainly a pocket camcorder, but it's more likely to be at home in your jacket pocket or even a small bag.

It's packed full of extra gadgets and useless features that you'll probably only use once.  The slow motion mode, for instance, allows you to film at up to 600 fps, as long as you turn the resolution down to 192 x 108 pixels--or worse than your average webcam.

You can also take 8 Megapixel still photos, using the built-in flash if necessary, but the results are questionable and the colours dull.   A useful alternative is capturing a still frame of a video while filming, which allows you to enjoy much more accurate colours and the 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution of the video mode.



Image Quality

Without a doubt, the HD2000's main strong point is the excellent quality video it produces for such a small camcorder.  It handles 1080p--today's leading HD format--perfectly, and playing back some of the videos we shot on a 32'' Full HD TV was breathtaking.  Compared to Kodak's Zx1, the colour is much more even, and the improvement in detail upgrading from 720p is very noticeable.  The 0.5'' sensor on the HD2000 is big enough to capture a decent amount of light even in dark settings. 

Another positive feature  which is often neglected by pocket camcorder manufacturers is the quality of the sound, with crisp, clear AAC files the order of the day.  There's also a line in for an external microphone (see above)

The bulkiness at the top of the 2000HD is due to the large 16x zoom lens, which is certainly an advantage, but whose effectiveness depends largely on the stabilizer, which doesn’t always work particularly well.  As a pocket camcorder, it's likely you'll be holding it in your hands rather than using a tripod, but you'll need to have a very steady hand--or even hold it in two hands--if you want to use the zoom.

Videos are saved on an SDHC card, which you'll have to supply yourself, and are encoded as MPEG-4 files using the H.264 codec.  You'll need around a 100 MB to store every minute of 1080p footage, compared to around 60 MB a minute for 720p video, and you can also choose 1080i or even 480i to save more space.

Copying the videos onto a computer is very easy, and you can play your files using your media player of choice.  A charging dock is supplied that also offers USB, HDMI and component video outputs.  It's a useful accessory as you can leave it plugged in next to your computer or television.


Simply playing your clips back is very easy, but things get more complicated if you want to edit your video.  Despite using the H.264 standard, we found that a lot of the video files we downloaded from the HD2000 were unrecognized by most PC video editing suites.  This is a real shame, as otherwise we would happily have recommended the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000 as a useful video blogging tool, especially given the presence of a microphone input.