... This is my 3rd Sony camcorder over the past 11 years. My first was the TRV-310 which used Digital 8 tapes and at the time was the high end for consumer camcorders. We used it for travels all over the world and were very pleased with the quality. It was especially good in low light, which tends to be where we used it most (indoors in regular incandescent light, which I would guess would be 75% of the total recording).
We had our first child and upgraded to the DCR-HC85 mini DV camcorder and again were very pleased. We shot over 70 hours of tape and over Christmas converted all the tapes to a hard drive through a 3rd party company (who has time to convert tapes at a 1:1 ratio plus setup time?) because were were tired of creating long index pages for each tape and then digging though them to find the small section we wanted (1 terabyte drive to hold it all!). The only issue I had was that as comcorders started moving to digital, the low light quality got worse. This one was frustrating indoors with shadows, backlit settings created dark, grainy videos, etc.
About 2 weeks ago, I decided it was time to bit the bullet and buy the XR520V. I am absolutely impressed. I was very skeptical about the low light specs on the Sony site (11 lux vs. 4 lux I had on the TRV310 and 8 lux on the HC85). I guess because of the larger CMOS sensor,the higher resolution and going back to an optical lens, the low light is excellent. Perfect for indoor use even in pretty low light (finally!).
The one feature I like the most is the index of each section of video recorded. If you are like me, you have hundreds of 30 second to 2 minute clips which were impossible to index on a tape. This indexes by date, so you can scroll through the dates and see thumbnails of each clip. This is so much better than fast forwarding through a tape (if you can call it FF!). Again, hooray!
Pros:
*Great low light
*Outstanding video quality
*Instant on by just opening the LCD screen
*Index thumbnails grouped by date (even my kids like this since they can pick out their favorites instantly!)
*Much better controls on the camera (record, zoom are also on the LCD screen, so big fingers don't have to squeeze into the hand strap and then find the zoom)
*Nice optical stabilization and zoom (be warned that in full HD mode, it will track every shake and although not jittery, it is noticable). Zoom is very smooth and doesn't "jerk" like older models if you moved it too fast.
*Touchscreen menus are much better than previous models
*37mm filter diameter, so I can keep most of my lenses from the last 2 camcorders (again, keep in mind that with HD, you will need to upgrade wide angle or zoom lenses due to resolution, but UV should be fine).
*Nice, compact size. I'm not carrying a large bag with me everywhere we go.
Cons:
*You should budget spending at least another $300-400 for accessories. The included battery is functional, but you may get caught short on a long trip without some way to keep it charged in the car. You will also need software to be able to convert the video to HD due to the AVCHD compression (Sony Vegas seems to be the best for this at about $80 on Amazon); a good UV filter to protect the lens; HDMI cable; new case (as I would lose this camcorder in my current case for the HC85) and a 1TB hard drive to save video (to start!). Blu-Ray will be a much later purchase for us.
*No HDMI cable included.
*Using the HDMI cable, it appears the camcorder will only output a 1080i signal max. Not sure I understand that one, but in the setup of the camera, it doesn't give an option for 1080p output throught HDMI. What gives?
*GPS is nice, but I have to go outside to get a satellite to get my location. I think it will be a novelty for me as I get tired of doing this and just quit bothering. Maybe if I am on family vacation somewhere and I want to tag it, otherwise, I will spend a lot of time chasing satellites.
I have to say overall, I will thoroughly enjoy this camcorder. We have 2 kids 4 and 2 and this is so much easier to use and carry around than our older model. I also like the quick on, so we don't miss their spontaneous sing alongs. It is also nice to take videos over a weekend trip and then just plug it into the TV, go to the index and pick out what we want to watch. Instant gratification! No more finding a tape and going back and forth to find the scenes we want (plus the previous camcorders FF is about 2X FF max).
I only got the 520V over the 500V for the extra drive space. Normally, I never try to max out a drive or flash card in a camera to avoid loss of data. I regularly copy over from my camera and never max out the flash card, so I imagine I will do the same here, but with no option to get an extra tape when I need it, it was worth the $200 for the extra space. I would never want to get caught short here!
4 stars only due to price and "forced" cost of needed accessories.
Enjoy! ...
Check Amazon Price and Read More Reviews on Sony HDR-XR520V 240GB HDD High Definition Camcorder w/12x Optical Zoom
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