Canon ZR850

Pros: Built in lens cap, no touch screen, wide screen mode, small and light weight, connectors easy to get to

Cons: charge cord prongs don't fold, light on/off in menu system, no analog video in

Summary: This is a very solid camera for the money, I think it is intended as most are in this price range to be an "autopilot" camera, where the user can just turn it on and it does everything for you. In this case I think it does a great job. The issue seems to be with low light, I am not sure how other cameras perform in low light, but I found I can set the P mode to night and get a solid image in very low light. The response time lags a bit, so I wouldn't swing it around real fast in night mode but if you hold it still it seems to work fine, you might have to try it out for yourself if you are shooting low light action sequences. The "light" is useless for anything far away and it adds its own led tint on the things it does illuminate close by. The 35x optical zoom is awesome, you can read a newspaper print from 15 feet away without having to go into digital zoom.
I stuck with Mini DV after reading about the HDD cameras do MPEG compression on the fly which can lower the quality and I didn't want a DVD one. I am sure this camera will do the trick until the HDD cameras become more common and the price comes down.