Canon Vixia HF R11

Pros: Good quality video, external mic input, reasonable price.

Cons: Short battery life, unable to recognize edited projects using its own video.

Summary: If you just want to shoot some HD video and play it back the way you shot it on your HDTV, no problem. The picture quality is quite good and the camera has some nice features you would expect on more expensive models. However, if you want to edit your video on an HD video editing program (I tried both Pinnacle 14 Ultimate and Adobe Premiere Elements 8), then transfer the edited project back to the camera for HD playback, forget it. I've talked to two Canon support techs, and both confirmed that the camera will not be able to accept and playback edited projects, including those shot, edited, rendered and saved in the AVCHD format which the HF R11 uses. The only program that will allow an edited project to be sent back to the camera with success is the Pixela editing program bundled with the camera, but Pixela is little more than a program than can rearrange and shorten existing shots.