In addition to the usual full set of Program AE settings - ranging from Sports and Portrait right through to Fireworks and Lamp settings, you're also given several white balance presets, such as Sunny, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent and One Push. In all cases, the menu is easy to navigate and make selections from - even while recording.

Knock-out quality

Insert a high capacity SD card (SDHC Class 6, preferably) into the slot at the rear of the handgrip, put the cam into Auto mode, record a few video clips in good light outdoors and play them back via HDMI (cable not supplied) or component digital (cable supplied) on a High Definition TV display and you'll be knocked out by the quality.

Shooting outdoors in optimum light the four megapixel (stills) CMOS image device produces an HD movie resolution of 3.56MP - and 2.18MP in standard definition movie mode. Although 1080 line frames use interlacing, there's minimal evidence of this even on fast movement, such is the ability of the CMOS chip.

It should be noted that no SD card is supplied with the product, but you can expect to save up to 85 minutes of Full HD (1920 x 1080i) movie clips onto a single 8GB SDHC card - and bear in mind that 16GB cards are now available too.

Even in darkish corners indoors, the single CMOS chip turns in quite respectable quality images, though the autofocus evidently struggles on occasion. Although Sanyo claims an effective macro capability with this 10x optical zoom lens, it's not nearly as good as that of its nearest competitor - and that's the Panasonic HDC-SD5.

Overall the image resolution, colour control and contrast ratio are all extremely good, and particularly so when you are recording under manual control. Without a doubt, playback via HDMI is excellent, and marginally better than the SD5.

Long battery life

Manipulating the controls with the right thumb and forefinger while recording is clunky and impedes stability when recording, which calls into question the research we referred to previously, but it's a neat device, especially when used in conjunction with the docking station. The supplied battery provided over two hours recording in Full HD mode, and offers the capability of 275 minutes in playback mode.

Supplied with the camcorder is a collection of software that incorporates Ulead DVD MovieFactory 5SE and Nero 7 Essentials. Despite supposedly successful installations, we couldn't get past the, 'No capture driver is available in the system' pop-up on two different Windows PCs when attempting to import and compile video clips via USB.

On a new Intel iMac (one that quite happily works with AVCHD files in iMovie '08) all the imported MPEG4 files were faulty - even though they played back perfectly on a
direct HDMI connection to an HDTV display. Could this be related to the fact that the HD1000 records at 60Hz and not the 50Hz we require in the UK? An editing program set for 25fps PAL will not edit clips with a frame rate of 29.97fps. And they're hoping that complete newcomers will use this?

Import, editing and DVD creation issues apart, it's a great camcorder that does everything it says on the box. HD pictures are fabulous and the feature set will undoubtedly put some competitors on the defensive. It's just a pity they've made a pig's ear of the software bundled with it.