Sony Handycam DCR-SR45

Reviewed by

Joshua Goldman

on 08/04/2008

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You access all menus through the 2.7-inch wide-aspect touch-panel LCD. Despite the use of tiny onscreen icons to navigate settings, the screen was very responsive and accurate to tapping. There are two menu systems: a Home menu to get to all feature settings and an Options menu to get directly to the available functions for video and still images, such as focus, white balance, and recording modes. It might take awhile to remember when and how to use the menus, but again the screen is so responsive that flying through the menus to find what you need goes fairly fast. There's also a set of four buttons lining the left LCD bezel that come in handy when recording overhead or at a low angle: home, zoom in, zoom out, and start/stop recording.

Maybe I've become spoiled by the sharpness and detail of HD video, but as with many budget standard-def camcorders I find the SR45's video quality disappointing. Nor does it appear to have improved from the SR42. Video looks soft and displays quite a bit of noise and artifacts until you scale down to YouTube-size dimensions. Anyone planning on full-screen playback on even a small TV will likely be unhappy with the results. If you still live completely in a low-resolution world or simply want to capture the moment no matter how it looks, the SR45 will suffice. But you might get better photos out of your camera phone. On the upside, it performs pretty well, with responsive autofocus, pretty good white balance, and quickly adjusting autoexposure.

The Sony Handycam DCR-SR45 is better than most entry-level HDD camcorders. Its compact, lightweight build is great for grab-and-go videos. The 30GB hard drive allows for plenty of storage, plus you can save video and stills to Memory Stick Pro Duo cards up to 8GB. And it's easy to operate thanks in part to a responsive, 2.7-inch touch-screen LCD. Sadly, it's only the video quality that doesn't live up to the rest of the package. But if you don't care about that, neither do we.