I bought my Sony DCR-SR32 a few weeks ago, and hadn't really used it much as I don't have much to review at the moment. What I had seen in my first few goes wasn't impressive but I tried to put that out of my mind as I didn't want to think I'd made a big error. Then I saw Vlad's post and comments where he revealed he had sent back his Sony camcorder from the same range, and I thought I better check mine more extensively.

After doing some more checking, I can confirm that the quality was awful. Natural light make it freak out, and straight edges appear very digitised and terrible to look at. I was actually shocked. I don't know much about cameras but i like the Sony brand and put my trust in them. It had a still camera onboard as well and that was some pathetic VGA quality which wasn't as good as my first camera phone from 3 years ago. The video camera on my normal still camera from Samsung was better than the Sony DCR-SR32.

I thought I was probably lumbered with the junk, but inspired by Vlad sending his back, I checked out Amazon's return procedure and found an option that allowed you to return it within 30 days for the reason "did not meet expectations". So I'm sending it back today but almost can't believe how easy it is to return (as I think that goes well beyond statutory rights), but will wait til the money's back in the bank before buying another.

Seeing the SR32 has made me evaluate what I want from a camcorder, and I'm now going to try something completely different like the Canon HV20 which has stunning results.

Whilst on the subject of Amazon, got to say a big thanks to the person that bought 40 USB Memory sticks (although he of course won't see it!) from my Amazon link the other day and pushed me up into the next performance tier with just a couple of days to go til month end. I love the randomness of people's purchasing!

Labels: amazon, camcorder, Sony DCR-SR32