In the frenzy to develop camcorders that are even smaller, more compact and cheaper than ever before, manufacturers sometimes lose sight of the kind of features that consumers love.

Fortunately Canon is helping to redress the balance with the introduction of the MVX460 - a camcorder that succeeds with a selection of old-fashioned but essential functions.

The MVX460 boasts a wide range of manual features, a solid set of digital photography tools and comes with the usual suite of edit software, but for us the real treats come with its analogue inputs, its two-way FireWire ports, a 20x optical zoom and an external mic socket.

These might not be the features a salesman would choose to sell you sub-£400 model but in our opinion that's a great step on the way to producing an award-winning camcorder.

Design and layout

The MVX460 is blessed with small dimensions and is featherlite (it's amazingly only 370g), so easily falls into the compact cam territory. It's designed to be as unobtrusive as possible and would easily fit into a jacket pocket.

The tiny dimensions mean that it's slightly more difficult to hold steady than larger models and we found it essential to have the electronic image stabiliser engaged for most shooting

Comfortable to hold over extended periods and with most of the major controls falling to hand easily, the MVX460 our first impressions are very positive. Further investigation throws up a few design issues, though. The camcorder appears not to have very many external controls, with the whole left flank and lens barrel seemingly unburdened with buttons.

This myth is dispelled by a far too hectic back plane, which has a large number of controls. Among them is the record button with options to select camera or playback and a small lever, which can be moved between tape and memory card recording.

Also, at the back is a joystick - that we found difficult to use on account of it being too small! - which is for selecting menu items, and a switch for Easy and Progressive shooting modes.

Features

The MVX460 has the usual share of fades, digital effects and image tools, but what we really love are its analogue inputs. AV inputs allow you to hook up a VCR or analogue cam and dub your old footage onto digital tape.