Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000A HD Video Camera Review

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Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000A HD Video Camera Review

Friday, 26 February 2010 20:22

The Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000A HD video camera is an incredible camera that’s small enough to take anywhere. The VPC-HD2000A shoots full 1080p up to 60 frames per second. It also can take 8-Megapixel stills with high speed sequential shooting at 12 frames per second. Everything is stored to SDHC cards. A good quality, fast card will run about $200 so keep that in mind. Using a 32GB SanDisk card we were very happy with the speed of operation and 120 minutes of full 1080p HD recording time.

The VPC-HD2000A resembles a small radar gun with its pistol grip and folding LCD screen. We really like this form factor for family video. The camera instantly turns on when the LCD is flipped open and is ready to shoot in just a second or so. The pistol grip makes it very easy to point and shoot and get interesting angles without straining to position the camera or see the display. It could use a rubber grip or less slick plastic composite but other than that we love this design.

The controls and buttons are arranged in such a way that only one hand is required for operation. It’s also very easy to figure out the controls without referring to the manual, always a good test of design. The included dock and connectors are also well designed and easy to setup. We were very impressed with the out of box experience, OOBE, of the VPC-HDC2000A.

The camera offers quite a bit of control over the image so more advanced users can experiment. Full auto mode is perfect for anyone that wants better quality than a Flip camera without the expense of a full size camera and lens.

We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the Xacti camera. In all kinds of light we were able to get very good quality footage. As with any camera this small image stabilization is very important as is a controlled shooting style. It’s nowhere near as bad as toy cameras like the Flip but you have to be conscious of keeping things steady. The pistol grip helps in this regard.

The Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000A uses the new iFrame format which is the same format used for editing. It’s a cross platform format for your Mac or PC and is based on H.264, AAC, MP4 and QuickTime. We used Sony Vegas for our test and simply dropped the footage on the timeline, no conversion required. The finished results were excellent. This camera will not replace our HVX200 but for fun family video that’s a step above cheaper toy cameras like the Flip it’s excellent. If you want a camera that’s easy to use, portable and takes very good footage in an easy to operate package the VPC-HD200A should be at the top of your list.

To see video shot using the Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2000A watch this video shot by a friend of funkyfresh for a Sanyo video contest. Granted this was shot by a pro and edited but it still gives you sense of the quality you can get wtih the small but mighty VPC-HD2000A. All three videos where shot using the VPC-HD2000A.

Visit Sanyo for more information.

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