Sony HDR-CX110 High Definition Handycam Camcorder (Red)

Review by John S. Dean for Sony HDR-CX110 High Definition Handycam Camcorder (Red)
Rating:
I was looking to replace my JVC Everio, that had a 60GB hard drive in it. I loved the convenience of the hard drive, since that replaced an older unit I had that used the small tape cartridges. But the prices for the HD capable units are more than I was willing to pay for a camcorder, so looked at the units that just used memory sticks.

I have the Sony DSC-TX1 digital camera and was blown away by its optical quality, and it even took 720p movies which were just insanely clearer than my 1 year old JVC camcorder. That was when I realized I needed to lose the JVC. Almost all the movies I do are of my son, now 6 years old, so the better the quality the happier I would be. Too many artifacts with the low definition JVC, panning was just ugly ugly ugly, and while it had a great response in low light, the picture quality was just not what I wanted considering how good everything else with my TV and still camera.

I was initially going to get the 100 version of this, since it was so insanely cheap for a 1080 capable camcorder, but the bad low light capability put me off, since most of what I record is in my house. And the very low numbers for optical zoom also concerned me. But amazon conveniently puts little links under the initial product listing if there’s a new version, so I saw the 110 and the price was good. I did some digging on Sony’s site, somewhat confused that the cheap little 100 had 16GB built in but the higher end had none, but when I saw the rest of the specs in comparison, I felt it was a very good unit to give a test run with. My local brick and mortars didn’t have it in stock, so I ordered it from Amazon and got the Saturday delivery early on Saturday, plenty of time to charge it up and try it out.

I left all settings at default except for the quality setting. That was easy to find, and the touchscreen on this unit makes it very easy to operate. As with my sony still camera, it has a “user” screen too where you can pin the six most used functions to save you from having to navigate into submenus. I love this feature, as it made my touchscreen still camera so simple and quick to use.

So I did four test movies, all of the same thing (my 6 year old playing with a huge Geotrax set), at all four of the options for 1080p resolution. The camera is smaller than I had expected, very light and fits well in the hand. The only real buttons to deal with in normal operation are the zoom and the start/stop recording, which are placed well despite the small size of the unit. If you want to grab a still as well, which you can do while recording, that button is on top right behind the zoom, so it’s easy to get at. So use is great, no problems.

As I said, touch screen menu is great, so changing settings as I went was a piece of cake.

Started with the highest 24Mbps, then the next down (I think it was 17Mbps), then the “default” one they start you out at, 9Mbps, then the lowest. When I was done, I pulled the card out (nice, quick access on the bottom with a great, sturdy, hinged door). Went into my macbook pro just fine, and i started playback.

I have a 13″ macbook pro, the aluminum unibody, that I got about four months ago. So new core2 duo processor, nvidia 9400 graphics… And it could not play the highest or second highest quality movies raw… Which told me that they were going to be great on my windows 7 media center. The third and fourth files played, but since the laptop is not a 1080 screen, it didn’t look that good. So I went ahead and pulled the memory card out of the laptop, put it in my Dell Zino that runs my beautiful 46″ Samsung HDTV, and played them all.

One thing I hadn’t realized is that when it creates the files, it creates them in a native bluray playback format, the folder structure and all. So that should make it easy for people who will want to burn to Bluray.

Anyway, on the media center, i played the highest quality one first. And my jaw dropped, and I nearly had to go buy some adult diapers. WOW. That was all I could say or think. WOW. It was just outstanding, WAY better than I had expected. And it’s not like I’m so unfamiliar with HD that even bad HD was impressive to me – my first HDTV was purchased back in 1999, a huge 60″ Mitsubishi diamond line TV. So I’ve been using HD for over 10 years now. And this just knocked my socks off.

I had nearly no artifacting or blurring or anything with the movement of the camera as I’ve come to expect from camcorders. Even the blurring was minimal. And the shots of things were just crystal clear. I had a 1080p version of the movie BOLT running on the TV as he played with his geotrax, so I zoomed in so that filled the viewfinder, and recorded some of the movie. During playback at that scene, I couldn’t even tell it wasn’t the original playing back, that it was a recording of the TV from earlier, it was that clear.

I was indoors, in Wisconsin on a winter day with snow falling, so there was no direct sunlight, just all clouds. Only one window’s curtains open, and no lights turned on inside. And the clarity and lighting was excellent. Every bit I could hope for.

So I tried the next down quality, and it blew me away. As did the third and then the lowest quality. All looked stunning. When I got down to the lowest, I could see some difference between it and the highest, but for what I was, and will be, shooting (my son), I think I’ll end up using the default third lowest setting because it was still jaw droppingly good on my HDTV.

I got the 16GB card since the 32GB card was still in the three digit price range, and i have a habit of transferring the files to my computer as soon as I’m done shooting anyway. And at the third quality setting, the default 9Mbps one, a 25 minute clip used just 1.9GB, so I should get about 3 1/2 hours on this card at this rate, so I’ll not have to worry about running out of media for my normal use.

The display is crisp and clear, widescreen format, and not cluttered when recording. Response to touch was very good, only once when selecting something from a bottom of a menu did I have to touch it twice, since the first didn’t register. Didn’t take any pressure to get it to see my pressing.

The still picture while shooting video worked easily enough, but they’re not great quality, so it won’t replace your digital camera if you have a good one. But it may give you a decent still shot of something you would have missed otherwise…

All in all, this is waaaayyyyy better than I had expected, and more than I had even hoped for. 100% satisfied with the unit.

I can’t attest to battery usage yet, since I have only had it for five hours, and only ran about 40 or 45 minutes of recording through it so far. In a few days I’ll pop back in here and edit this with the results I’ve seen with regards to the battery life, since this is evidently the first review of this model.