Sanyo Xacti VPC-C1

Author's product rating:   

Ease of use
Recording quality
Picture quality
Sound quality
Value for money

Advantages:	Compact, feature packed, easy to use .
Disadvantages:	Occasional problems with larger memory cards, though nothing serious

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

If your a family person thinking about buying a cam-corder, consider this device. For your money, you get a high quality digital camera and DVD quality video camera rolled into one.

The device can be set to basic user, or expert user, with some seriously meaty futures packed in to make your captures more interesting.

There's a verbal assistant with the camera which will tell you where you are and what its doing, which is useful for starters but gets annoying after a while, so worth switching off.

The design is neat, and compact, and the controls are manageable for those whose fingers are a little on the big side.
Although first impressions are the cool flip up and rotating screen will break, its very sturdy, and the joints of the screen are still tight and click in the right places after 12 months of use. The only bad thing I would say about the construction is that although there is a timer for taking photos, and the screen can be turned all the way round so you can see what it sees (the image is flipped over on the screen so its not upside down), you cant sit it down to take a photo due to its shape. There is a tripod screw in point on the base, however, because the lens is the only mechanical part, its top heavy and prone to falling forwards; so care must be taken with tripods lighter than the camera itself.

The battery life is excellent due to it only having one mechanical component; the lens (the rest is electronic).

I find the optical zoom very effective, however, once you reach the digital zoom the picture quality becomes very poor, so better stick to the optical. The 60x digital zoom is there, however, after using it only slightly the picture quality becomes useless. Digital zoom is a feature of many camera devices which is long overdue disposing of.

The photos you can take with this device can be of a very high quality, with control of the flash function and exposure (or scene selection options as it is called in the menu system). Some neat effects can also be applied if you like, such as scratched up b&w movie, or a ghost shadow effect.

I'm a family guy with four kids, and wanted something I could use to capture a little something of those memorable moments. I found that with tape devices, people tend to record hours of nonsense which is not so easily edited out. With this device, you are limited by the capacity of your memory card, so tend to keep your video clips down to a reasonable size by trimming them, splitting them, and just erasing the bits you don't want to keep.

The device uses the standard SD cards to store its pictures and video. I currently use a 256mb card which I find more than adequate for a day out, with a 128mb spare. I've seen cards these days which carry 1 GB of data, which sell for about £40-50. That's about 320 minutes of video, or about 1000 photos. Whether the C1 can use these I'm not sure.

Within a 6 month period, the device has stopped working correctly (crashed) two or three times. To fix this, I removed the battery, and put it back in again, which brought everything back to normal.
I found this was caused by image corruption. To fix this, copy all but the broken image/video to your PC, and perform an erase all on your camera to remove all the files. I'm pretty sure this strange occurrence had to do with the SD card I was using at the time, which was bought cheaply from an unknown company.

If your taking video, you will notice the stereo sound quality is very impressive, however, if you use the zoom feature while recording, you may pick up some mechanical whirring if the environment is particularly quite.

The pretty little hologram on the back of the flip up screen will wear off in time, though this is no serious issue.

The software provided is comprehensive, and paired with a DVD recorder, you could make DVD's for your kids to embarrass them with when there older.

In summery, I consider this a great investment, simply because the video and photos are of a high quality, cost nothing to develop, and don't need tiresome bulky tapes.

The digital zoom is pointless, although the optical zoom is impressive enough to compensate for this. The construction is sturdy, and the controls are easy to use, although it cant be sat upright on a table or wall for timer photo's. The rare crash which is an unfortunate part of any complex software driven device is nothing worth being concerned about because recovery is very simple.