Sony DCR-DVD106 Review

Overall Rating

Many options
Good optical zoom
Stability of the image
Small and handy
Easy to use
Great all rounder
Touch Sensitive 2.5" LCD
Value for money

Exporting/downloading without finalizing disc is very slow.
Annoying message when not using Sony DVD's.

I bought this Sony DCR-DVD106 Handycam DVD Camcorder for a few reasons. The main reason was to share video's of our baby with my family who live abroad. The reason I got this Sony Digital Camcorder was because it represented excellent value for money.

Let's see, it is a very good size and weight. It is easy to operate and the quality of the videos is very good. The sound is excellent too. It has the Sony Image Stabilizer in it so most of the video's (unless you use excessive zoom) are nice and stable and look very professional especially when using a tripod. The value for money really can't be beaten. I got it off Amazon for just over £200 delivered the next day. It comes with a charger for the standard battery pack, USB cable and some software, including a DVD with tips on creating good looking home movies.

Some of the 'bad' points, although I must stress these are outweighed by the high quality on all the other fronts! First of all there is this annoying message when you're not using Sony discs, 'Sony Disc Recommended' but a simple touch on the 2.5" touch sensitive LCD screen hides it (untill the next time you power it on) and really you get used to it. Secondly if you want to export or download a video half way through filling up a DVD, it takes ages. I've got a 2.7ghz Desktop running XP and a Core 2 Duo 1.7ghz 2GB ram laptop running Vista and both take a very long time to do this. However, if you finalize the disc first (which usually takes 1-2 minutes) you will find it is a lot faster, but this means you can't write to the disc anymore. Once you're disc is finalized you can also just stick it in your PC's DVD player and import from there, which is even faster. I think most DVD players support this, both mine did.

So to sum it up, this is great Sony Handycam following in the tradition of the ones with the tapes. These little DVD discs are pretty cool and have a lot of advantages. The fact that transferring to PC is so much easier is only one advantage, storing and protecting them are a few others. The few 'bad' points can easily be forgotten. For the 200 pound you pay for this you get an excellent piece of modern home movie making equipment, definitely recommended.