Panasonic SDR-SW20 review

There are higher-specified digital video cameras, but for everyday use it's hard to imagine one more covetable than this.

Waterproof, shock-proof, and designed to get you recording in less than a second, the SDR-SW20 is aimed at those more interested in grabbing unmissable everyday moments than competing with George Lucas.

Available in silver or an eye-catching metallic red, this neat pocket-sized camcorder is a snip to operate, with all the buttons in the right places. At under £300, its specifications are inevitably better suited to video-sharing websites than big-screen movie viewing, but video quality is still a step up from what you could grab with a mobile phone or compact camera. And what it loses in picture resolution it makes up for in downright coolness. While basic recording is totally fuss-free, you also have the option of a suprisingly high level of manual control over all aspects of recording and playback.

Footage is captured using a single 1/6 inch CCD and saved onto high capacity SD cards, using MPEG-2 compression to produce 16:9 widescreen images of 350,000 pixels. By today's standards, that's not great, but certainly watchable, and if you plan to compress your movies to a size suitable for services such as YouTube, you won't be missing out on any quality.

The SW20's big advantage is that you can shoot underwater to a depth of 1.5 metres without any additional protection, and drop the camera from a height of 1.2 metres without wrecking it. With a 16GB SDHC card (around £45), it's possible to record more than 13 hours at the lowest 'LP' setting of 2.5Mbit/sec; at a more respectable 'XP' bit rate of 10Mbit/sec, you'd get three hours 20.

USB 2.0 and AV outputs are provided to connect to your PC and TV, and you also get MotionSD Studio software. The SDR-SW20 is an obvious choice if you're looking for better than camera phone quality but with the same ease of use and even more flexibility.

Author: Colin Barrett