A look at HD camcorders for the holiday shopping season.

This pocket HD camcorder records at 720p resolution, and can hold two hours of HD video in its 4GB of internal storage. The video quality isn't as good as the new Flip MinoHD, but the MyVideo did capture nice-looking video in well-lit situations

Sony's Handycam HDR-XR520V is a monster when it comes to storage capacity, with a 240GB hard drive.

Massive storage capacity, good manual control placement, optical viewfinder

Tricky user interface, heavy, short battery life, unremarkable HD video performance

In the hand, the HDR-XR520V looks and feels pretty portly, too, although its bulk makes it easy to hold. Strangely, its zoom toggle button is narrower and trickier to access comfortably than the HDR-CX520V, and you'll find your fingers and thumbs ...

If you're on a tight budget but want a larger-than-50-inch TV, consider the Insignia NS-LCD52HD-09.

Well-designed remote; headphone jack

No first-run wizard; confusing menus; mediocre image quality

Setup for this HDTV is more difficult than it should be. The first time you turn this TV on, you won't see a first-time setup menu. Instead you have to figure out the setup yourself—and since it never asks you where you'll be using the TV, you're ...

The no-frills Vizio VO420E 42-inch HDTV is attractively priced, but you'll have to settle for subpar image quality and mediocre audio.

A decent selection of customization options

Sub-par image quality and mediocre audio; no personal media playback or Internet features

Judges in our lab's juried tests gave the VO42E poor marks for everything from brightness and contrast ("detail loss in shadows") and color (described by many as oversaturated) to sharpness ("details smudged") and artifacts. These results probably ...

China has ordered Google to suspend its foreign Web site search service after warning that the company's filtering of pornography was too weak.

Good range of features including manual controls; good video quality; solid build

Confusing touchscreen menu system; odd manual dial location; geotagging feature didn't work

As you'd expect with Sony camcorders, the HDR-CX520V's build quality is high and it sits comfortably in your hand, giving easy access to its wide zoom toggle and still photo buttons. You'll find the usual smattering of sockets dotted around the ...

The MyVideo is purely a budget buy, but a solid one. Its looks and build quality may not be something you can fall in love with, but it shoots good enough video in bright light to make it a decent value for the $130 price.

Good range of features for the price; good video and stills in bright light

Plasticky build and ho-hum design; grainy footage in low light; choppy zoom

The MyVideo offers your average specs for a pocket camcorder: 4GB of internal storage (which translates to 2 hours of 720p footage), a 2-inch-diagonal display, a lithium ion battery you can recharge by plugging the camera into a USB port, and dead ...

Panasonic's HDC-HS300 is capable of extraordinary video quality and offer a good range of manual options, with manual lens ring controls that are as easy to use as they are capable.

Excellent picture quality even in low light; built-in storage capacity; good range of manual controls

Interface can be confusing; build quality not as good as some rivals; wind noise

The HDC-HS300 also offers a maximum AVCHD video recording resolution of 1920-by-1080 at 17Mbps, which looks a lot lower than the 24Mbps that Canon uses is similarly-priced camcorders. The HDC-HS300 includes a lens ring for focusing, and other manual ...

Panasonic's HDC-TM300 HD camcorder captures good video and still images, allows deep manual control, and provides useful automated settings.

Innovative, useful automated settings; good HD and still-image quality

No 30p mode

Three 1/4.1-inch CMOS chips capture images that the camera encodes as 1080i (at 60 interlaced frames per second) or 1080p (at 24 progressive frames per second) AVCHD files with a maximum data rate of 17 mbps. The camera has 32GB of built-in flash ...

There are only two reasons to buy Sanyo's Xacti VPC-WH1 HD camcorder, but they're good reasons: It's inexpensive, and it's waterproof.

Waterproof down to 10 feet below the surface

Limited automatic and manual controls; mediocre image quality

Compared with footage from the best 1080p HD camcorders, the VPC-WH1's 720p HD video (at 30 frames per second) exhibits noticeably (but not disastrously) reduced resolution, sharpness, color accuracy, and motion. The VPC-WH1's overall video image ...

Designed to sit at the top of JVC's Everio camcorder line, the GZ-HM400 should give its rivals a run for their money.

Excellent picture quality in bright light conditions; lots of manual control options

Laser Touch system is frustrating to use and slow; tricky to hold comfortably; low light picture noise

When it's time to start shooting, things get off to a slightly shaky start, unfortunately. The chunky body has a curious dip on the right side, which makes holding it uncomfortable. JVC also continues to use its Laser Touch system, which forces you to ...