Sony Handycam HDR-CX550V user reviews

Pros The best Features, ranked in order of what I thought was best for my needs.
1. the wide angle lens (29.8-298mm).
2. large 3.5 inch screen
3. Very good Low Light / IR Night Mode
4. 64 GB Flash Memory
5. EVF at high quality
6. 5.1 Stereo Mic

Cons Features I wished the Sony had:
1. 8 or 12 Megapixel CMOS instead of the 6 Megapixel. HD still looks amazing though
2. 12x or 15x zoom I like the wide angle more so not a big deal to give up big zooms.
3. No wind screen
4. Dont find GPS useful

Summary I was looking for a camera that had the most features, for the best price. I ended up looking at Panasonic HDC-TM700, Canon Vixia HF S20 and Sony HDR-CX550V. I actually went to a store that had all 3 models so I could compare.

All were around $1000-1100 in price, but I found the Sony to be the most comfortable, and had the best overall features. The features that sold me on the Sony was the wide angle lens (29.8-298mm), the good low light/night shot IR mode, 3.5 inch screen, 64 GB Flash memory, EVF, and Comfort in my hand.

Zoom/Lens
The Canon has a 43-435mm zoom, not wide enough for my taste, but good zoom for distance. Anything beyond 200mm does not interest me as I am rarely that far away to make that matter.

Touch Screen / EVF
The large 3.5 inch screen was amazing, sharp and easy to use for my fat fingers, compared to the Panasonic and Canon. Panasonic being the worst of the 3 for size, and the Canon touch screen was hard to use I thought.
EVF is a must, Panasonic had it but the Sony looked sharper and cleaner. Canon only has it on the S21 model for $300 more

Low Light
I tested the low light option by having the sales guy take all 3 cameras into a back stock room and shut off the lights, then recorded some footage, then turned on my cell phone as a low light source in the room, and shot some more footage. The Sony did the best overall with this test. Sharp clear well lit images compared to the other two, but the Panasonic did a decent job as well.
Autofocus was great on the Sony, and image stabilization worked better than I expected.

I cannot speak to the quality of the pictures from the Canon/Panasonic on my home TV, but on a 42" HDTV the Sony playback looks amazing. Sharp, clean, and clear.

Audio
I also liked the 5.1 audio, which the Panasonic had, but Canon did not. Outside the Sony does pickup wind if it is a particularly windy day (20+mph winds) The Panasonic seems to have a wind screen feature that the Sony Lacks.

Optical SteadyShot image stabilization w/ Active Mode

Storage
64GB on the Sony, 32 on the Panasonic and 32 for Canon unless you go with the HF S21 but that model is $300 more, and not worth that price for only 32 more GB and nothing else that I could see.

All of them take still photos while recording, which is also nice.

To re-cap, I went with the Sony cx550V because in every category that I could see, Sony tied or exceeded the other camcorders in the same price range. And my number one feature was the extra wide angle lens and built in light and night mode ability. For me these are most important. 64GB is more than enough, but I have a 8gb backup chip in the camcorder. It was the most comfortable in my hand as well, and feels like a solid camera. Hope this review helps you out, as you will not be disappointed with the Sony CX550V if you have ~$1100 or so to spend.

Pros Good customer support from Sony, large screen, plenty of flash memory.

Cons Viewfinder could be a little larger and with rubber cups versus hard plastic, intellifocus and image stabilizer works but not suitable for action sports, video software is very limited in what it can do. Factory battery lasts less than an hour.

Summary I am very disappointed in this camera's ability to record action sports. Tried using both viewfinder and screen to track the action. Tried using all three image stabilzer settings, using monopod and tripod. The software is very limited in what it can do compared to off the shelf software video software. Contacted customer support and they were helpful but acknowledged software cannot do many things I was wanting to do with video clips.

Updated on Nov 9, 2010

Just got done reviewing 16 hours of game footage to put together a collection of video clips for the team. Converted the AVCHD video clips to high quality DVD and I was surprised at the poor quality of the DVD when played on my 1080 HDTV. Called customer support and they acknowledged that the conversion process degrades the quality of the video and the larger the screen, the grainer the picture will be. Should have a bought a Canon.

Pros Wide lens. Touchscreen easy to use. Viewfinder nice to have. Image stabilization top notch. Compact size and weight.

Cons Lens cover mechanism. Image quality when played back on HDTV not as great as expected. Windcutter helped with wind noise reduction. Occasional infamous blue dot problem. Photos- eh. PMB software limitations. Could use lens hood accessory.

Pros Excellent automatic white balance - colour is actually better than real life when shooting under incandescent lights. The zoom microphone works well - no need for a shotgun mic to pickup speakers over 50' away.

Cons PBM software isn't great. It takes a long time to download the images to the computer - would have been better to have USB 3.0 connections. When shooting spinning objects, you have to remember to switch to manual focus mode.

Summary I have used camcorder for capturing demonstrations at woodturning symposiums, and with the extra capacity battery (that actually fits better than the supplied one) I was able to record over 8+ hours without changing battery or having to find a plug.
The video and audio quality was so good, that we were able to produce commercial DVDs. The remote works great when you can't get up on a crane to shoot down on a subject.