We challenge you to find a cuter camcorder than the Panasonic SDR-S15 - it's so small it's hard to believe it's a fully-functional home-movie shooter.
It's spectacularly small, and weighs just 165g before you pop in the battery, yet still crams in a reasonable selection of controls and a 2.7in widescreen LCD.
Feature filmIt packs in the features, too. You get stereo audio recording and a zoom microphone, which means the SDR-S15 records significantly better sound than most cameras in this price category. There's also an effective image stabiliser which works well throughout the long 10x optical zoom range - another feature we didn't expect to see on such a cheap camera.
On the fringesUnfortunately it all falls apart when you watch the video you've recorded. It only shoots standard definition, so there's a lack of detail, but the problems go deeper. There's was a certain lifeless quality to our shots, and we found our videos rather soft. Worse, straight edges looked bent in our films and high contrast areas - where dark areas of a scene meet bright areas - were marked with purple fringing.
And, although it builds in a useful number of controls, it's not that enjoyable to use. Some of the menu controls are nearly hidden under the screen, so you can't look at the buttons and the screen they're controlling at the same time. Other cameras place controls carefully around the screen
The SDR-S15 makes a great impression on paper, and it's first impression is similarly good: we really wanted to like it. But the quality of the results means we can't recommend it.
Copyright 2009 Dennis Publishing All Rights Reserved.
Panasonic SDR-S15