Samsung HMX-H106SP

The basics

High Def (1080i/720p) camcorder using 1/4.5-inch 2.2MP CMOS sensor. 64GB solid state drive storing MPEG-4/H.264 footage. 10x optical zoom with 37mm wideangle setting. 2.7-inch, 230,000-dot touchscreen LCD. Mini-HDMI out, SDHC slot. Measures 59x61x129mm, weighs 380g.

The good

Solid state drives (SSDs) have so much going for them – they’re lighter, smaller, tougher and faster than conventional hard drives, and more reliable to boot. Samsung is the first to put one in a camcorder, giving you room for about 7.5 hours of high quality (1080i) footage in the strong and silent H106SP. The zoom lens has a generous wideangle lens for wide-open landscapes or group shots, and the stabilisation is effective.

The bad

Putting a SSD into the H106SP is like dropping a Ferrari engine into a Segway – it doubles the cost and doesn’t really add much to the experience. The virtually identical but memory-less H100P costs around £300 less, and promises the same wobbly autofocus, sullen touch-sensitive tech and awkward manual features as the H106SP without also making you feel as though you’ve been mugged. Image quality is only average, thanks to soft resolution and oodles of noise.

The bottom line

The H106SP is a perfectly decent budget camcorder suffering from the addition of a unnecessary, expensive solid state drive. Buy the cheaper version, pick up a few cheap memory cards and put the rest into your MacBook Air savings account.