Sony HDR-XR520

The basics

Full HD (1920x1080) AVC-HD camcorder recording to shock-protected 240GB hard disc or Memory Stick Duo. 6.6MP 1/2.9-inch CMOS sensor capable of shooting up to 12MP still images. 12x optical zoom with SteadyShot stabilisation. 3.2-inch touchscreen, GPS and HDMI output. Weighs 525g.

The good

The world’s first street-smart camcorder automatically geo-tags your videos and photos, plotting them as tiny thumbnails on its built-in global maps. Every element of this Full HD camcorder is at the top of its game, starting with a brand new CMOS sensor that promises – and delivers – low levels of noise, richer, darker shadows and clearer, brighter colours than any consumer camera we’ve tried. Sony has improved its already impressive optical stabiliser, pumped up the hard drive to a quarter of a terabyte and stuffed the XR520 with every face detecting, smile shuttering, exposure boosting and manual tweaking feature known to cinematography. Sound is recorded in ear-tickilingly splendid 5.1 Dolby surround and the 3.2-inch touchscreen boasts nearly a million pixels for martini-clear framing and playback. Even its still snaps are as good as many dedicated digicams.

The bad

There’s no bad on board this Sony, but it does occasionally stray from perfection. There’s no standard way to geo-tag videos yet, so you’ll need to manual locate movies uploaded to Flickr. And don’t rely on the built-in maps to scout locations for your next blockbuster – the basic cartography is limited to just main roads.

The bottom line

Not only the best shooting Full-HD camcorder available for under a grand but the first of a new breed of smart, flexible, connected shooters that makes home movie making cool again.