Samsung puts HD video and 9-megapixel stills in the palm of your hand without straining your wrist. Its lightweight SD/SDHC-recording R10 makes a game effort at shifting the handheld videocams paradigm by taking a more laid back approach. Designed ...

Smart design: The lens is angled up at 25 degrees to make it more comfortable to use. Slick, swiveling 2.7-inch touchscreen is a terrific command center. Lots of manual and creative controls - like image sensitivity and frame rate. Records to SD/SDHC ...

Poor low-light sensitivity. No headphone or external microphone jacks. Stills and video a bit noisy. No lens cap or hand strap

: The 1.5-inch screen was too tiny for playback, the HD quality wasn't up to snuff compared to cheaper devices from the company's price-gouging competitors, and the MinoHD's 4 GB of onboard memory didn't quite justify the $230 price tag.

New Jack City: HDMI, oh my! Almost-Full Metal Jacket: Front-side brushed-metal body boosts toughness, adds character (and only 0.7 ounces). Reasonable battery life: 1.75 hours of mostly continuous recording. Upgraded software for basic video editing ...

Despite improvements, footage still not nearly as refined as Kodak Zi8. Indented Play/Trash buttons feel and look awkward. No 60 fps. No 1080p (though both are offered by cheaper cams from other manufacturers). Front-side red LED strip broadcasts "I'm ...

The rise of tiny, easy-to-use video cameras like the Flip has been a boon to wannabe Soderberghs. But the sparkly hi-def video is accompanied by lo-fi audio that would make any self-respecting sound editor scream. Shoot in a slight breeze, and the ...

The runner-up in our B-roll brawl came in a seriously close second - for less than half the price. The ContourHD's 720p video trounced all comers with its smooth, beautiful images. The whole kit weighs less than 5 ounces and looks more like an ...

Stunning image quality. Record/Stop slider switch is easy to operate, even with gloves on. Accepts up to 16 GB of microSD storage, and a 2-gig card is included. Laser-assisted aiming. Hell, yeah

With no LCD, you can't review what you've shot until you jack into a computer - a problem for long trips. Video quality suffers noticeably in low light. At speeds above 30 mph, the microphone listens only to the wind

Ever notice how the water along the shoreline recedes drastically right before a tsunami? You will now - or, at least, whoever recovers the highly shock- and water-resistant POV 1.5 will. Built like it was made for special ops, this camera will likely ...

Easy interface. Ten levels of mic sensitivity. Small remote straps to your wrist, so you can stash the main control unit in your bag

Resolution maxes out at 720 x 480 - standard-def seems a little low-rent for such a spendy gadget. Bulky and heavy

Two-hundred-dollar pocket cams might advertise themselves as "HD" capable, but don't believe the hype: They typically yield 720p clips better suited to YouTube than the boob tube.

Reproduces colors like a Crayola factory. Closeups pop with sharp, clear details. Nice performance in low light. Einstein-smart automatic shooting features are like having your own DP built into the camera. 32GB onboard memory is expandable via SDHC ...

Fast pans in bright daylight turns up more artifacts than a Mayan ruin. May require second mortgage

Pure Digital's Flip has proven that it's possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a ...

Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders

Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images cam come off looking a bit overexposed

The world of consumer electronics is thick with compromise. It's a sad fact that blows harder than the Santa Anas, especially as designers keep trying to load smaller, cheaper devices with piles of high-end features. That's why we went ga-ga for Kodak ...

Retrofuturistic Tron design lines and keypad. No more stealth-busting startup chime. HDMI OMG FTW (if you don't mind cables). 720p with up to 60fps. Rechargeable Ni-MH AAs and charger included. Nearly 34 percent smaller and 16 percent lighter than Zi6 ...

Slighter body = tinier screen (by a quarter of an inch) = crappier playback. Relatively narrow lens angle. Nocturnal and low-light shooting still yields noisy clips. Horse beater says: Isn't it the whole point of a pocket cam to avoid toting cables

You've longed to document your fascinating life for some time now, but you just haven't found the right lightweight HD camcorder. Well, here's the perfect tool for it: The Panasonic HDC-SD100 3CMOS camcorder can shoot 1080i HD video or 2.1-megapixel ...

Lighter than a feather in deep space. Useful remote lets you direct scenes from afar. Manual focus offers extra control not found in many other cams. Included 8-GB SD card gets you up and running on the quick.

You have to remove the battery to switch to AC power or connect via USB or HDMI. Video editor is a clunky chunky monkey. Menu-control "joystick" is extremely sensitive. Record time is limited by SD capacity - it really can't hang with its hard-drive ...

Standing apart from the crowd with its unique form factor, this Sanyo AVCHD video cam is a pocket-sized video rocket shooting 1080p at 30 frames per second with a 38-380mm zoom. The novel design and sharp video are complemented by functions like Face ...

Easy to handle form factor. 10x optical zoom. 4-megapixel stills on the fly. Admirable video quality.

No optical image stabilization. Sound is a touch weak.