Unlike the Panasonic HDC-SD20-K, which benefited from a fancy LCD touch screen, the SDR-H80 sticks to a traditional joystick interface. (This is further bolstered by Panasonic’s excellent optical image stabilisation system - a rarity in a camera at this price point.) However, we feel this actually works in the SDR-H80’s favour, as the added weight helps to counter against camera-shake. As you’d expect, the inner mechanisms add a fair bit of heft to the device, which weighs in at 350g. With dimensions of 107x53圆7mm, the Panasonic SDR-H80 is reasonably compact considering its inbuilt hard drive. The old-school finish is unlikely to turn many heads, but at least it won’t be mistaken for a Fischer Price toy ( Sony DCR-SR47, we’re looking at you.) We weren't fans of the protruding back battery either - it's an ugly design choice that many Panasonic camcorders suffer from. Unfortunately, Panasonic has opted to stick with drab traditionalism for the Australian version of the SDR-H80, which is black 'n' boring all the way. Like nearly every other gadget on the market, digital camcorders have enjoyed a style explosion in recent years, with the familiar black/silver finish supplanted by a range of fashionable colours. These recording times can also be doubled via a 64GB SDHC memory card (although one of these babies costs more than the actual camera). Nevertheless, this is still enough to net you between 18 and 72 hours of video before the hard drive fills up, depending on the video quality selected. Rather than the 80GB hard drive that its name would seem to suggest, the SDR-H80 actually comes with 60GB of inbuilt memory. On the downside, image quality was a little on the soft side and the camcorder performed poorly in low lighting, but that’s a relatively small price to pay for such a cheap and versatile camcorder. What’s more, it’s very attractively priced at just $829. Other noteworthy features include an Intelligent Auto (iA) mode for automatic scene selections, inbuilt encoding software for Youtube uploads, face detection technology and an SD card slot for hybrid recording.

Without a doubt, the standout feature is its astonishing 70x optical zoom lens, which is easily the most powerful zoom lens of any camcorder we’ve tested.

The Panasonic SDR-H80 is a standard-definition camcorder equipped with a 60GB inbuilt hard drive.

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