Sanyo Announces 6 New Camcorders!
New Xactis for a New Year
New Xacti for a New Year
In seven countries around the world on 21st January, Sanyo announced six new camcorders in their Xacti line-up; three in the familiar Xacti vertical hand-held design, and three surprisingly in the horizontal design - a new look for Sanyo. Launches were held in Dubai, Munich, Toronto, London, New York, Osaka, and we were present in Bangkok to catch the news.
The new Sanyo Dual Camera HD-capable Xacti camcorders aim to combine digital still cameras and camcorders into compact and easy-to-use models, and because they record to SD cards (in the MPEG4 AVC/H.264 format) without a built-in hard drive, they're very small and light. The six new camcorders fall into three categories of two models each; Full HD, Compact HD and Waterproof HD. Let's take a quick look of these new camcorders by categories:-
Full HD
The Full HD Dual Camera Xacti camcorders record up to a resolution of 1920 x 1080 (in both 1080i and 1080p formats), shoot 8MP photos and have 10x optical zoom.
VPC-FH1
VPC-HD2000
Compact HD
The Compact HD Dual Camera Xacti camcorders are smaller than the Full HD models for easy carrying on the go, and record up to 720p. The VPC-CG10 shoots up to 10MP photos, while the VPC-TH1 boasts a 30x optical zoom, and also a long 3 hour 20 min continuous battery life, recording in HD!
VPC-TH1
VPC-CG10
Waterproof HD
If you've ever worried about getting your camcorder wet, the VPC-WH1 and the VPC-CA9 are for you. The VPC-CA9 can go down to 1.5m in water, while the VPC-WH1 goes down to 3m. Sounds great for shooting in the rain, water-sports or the annual Songkraw festival in Thailand!
VPC-WH1
VPC-CA9
Coming in March
Our first hands-on impressions with the new Sanyo Xacti Dual Camcorders are that they're beautifully compact and light, making them easy to carry. The videos and photos we saw on demo also looked promising, and we look forward to getting them in our labs soon to put them through their paces in our usual thorough analysis. Sanyo says we can expect to see them in stores by late March to early April, but pricing is yet to be firmed at this point of time.