Sony Handycam DCR-SX41- Camcorder With No HD Recording
Sum and Substance:
Thumbs Up:
Simple to use, light weight, 60x zoom lens.
Thumbs Down:
No HD recording or other advanced features.
Inside the Trunk:
Included cables – USB cable and A/V cable
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
DCR-SX41 has a digital zoom 2000 x, optical sensor size is1/8″, videos are stored in MPEG-2 format, minimum shutter speed is ¼ second and maximum shutter speed is 1/4000 second. Shooting programs include snow, candle, sunrise, landscape, sports mode, twilight mode, beach, sunset, fireworks, spotlight, portrait mode. The camcorder has 2.7 inch TFT LCD display.
Images are stored in JPEG format. The camcorder comes with 8 GB built in memory. The lens is Zoom lens – 1.8 mm – 108 mm – F/1.8-6.0, with focal length of 1.8 mm – 108 mm, it has 60x optical zoom, minimum focal length is 1.8 mm, maximum focal length is 108 mm and the lens is manufactured by Carl Zeiss.
Additional features include face detection, USB 2.0 capability, touch screen control and Dolby Digital AC-3 (2 channel) recording. The connector ports include Composite video/audio output, S-Video output and USB. There is an expansion slot for Memory Stick PRO Duo.
The camcorder has 2.7 inch TFT LCD display. The device is powered by Sony NP-FH30 li-ion rechargeable battery.
Razzle Dazzle:
There are three color options of red, silver and blue for the DCR-SX41. We got the silver model in our test centers and the shiny exteriors make the device look cute. It doesn’t have too many advanced features to intimidate you. The hand strap of the camcorder is a bit low but still comfortable to use.
Inside Dope:
DCR-SX41 is a camcorder from Sony which has 60x megazoom lens, 8 GB of internal memory and there is also an expansion slot to put more memory. This device is made for people who don’t need too many features or are confused with such convoluted options. What you get in the end is a simple to use camcorder without any advanced features and mediocre performance. The inferior quality will show when you view the videos on a big HDTV.
The battery peeps out from the back of the camcorder and below there is power input and the card slot for putting Memory Stick Pro Duo cards. Apart from this, there are five buttons for turning the display information on and off, a key for directly recording on to the DVD, Backlight option, easy button that relieves you all the advanced features and gives you a simple ‘point and shoot’ interface. Rest all of the controls have to be used through the touch screen interface. The touch screen is responsive and fast but you might get confused with those new home and menu buttons. The menu is for shooting options based on the context and for everything else there is home button. You might get confused with the sub menus too and probably you will have a tough time remembering where the functions are located. However there is the reference manual to the rescue, it has a tree diagram of all these sub-menus.
Sony’s Picture Motion Browser software that is bundled along with the device cannot be used with Mac. Fortunately, Sony gives you an application called MPEG Streamclip for Mac for converting the videos.
The camcorder doesn’t have a lot of advanced options but it is extremely simple to use. We tested the camcorder with settings of focus, scene selection, white balance set to auto and it performed quite well. There are also a couple of options for scene and white balance. We were disappointed to find that you cannot control the recording or zoom from the touch screen of the camcorder.
The camcorder is quite fast when it comes to starting up, you just have to open the LCD and the device will power itself on. The autofocus is good but it will struggle in low light conditions and will keeping hunting to focus.
The camcorder has battery life of about 100 minutes but the battery will drain quicker if you are using the device to view clips that you have shot. Using the touch screen and the zoom functions also eats in to the battery juice. Sony told us that there are extended batteries available for the device, which give up to 13 hours of recording.
Video quality was mediocre but we aren’t complaining much since this is an entry level device. Video clips will have noise unless you shorten it to YouTube like dimensions. Low light conditions further worsened the quality of videos. The camcorder also takes photographs but the quality is bad and we think even a camera phone will do better than this.
Nitty Gritty:
DCR-SX41 is for you if you don’t care too much about quality and want a budget friendly camcorder. It is quite easy to carry around due to its compact size, the camcorder will easily fit in your coat pocket. But there are other devices which give better features for a same price and there is no HD quality recording.
