The standout feature on the S0200? Easy: it's the wonderfully vibrant colours it achieves. Panasonic's 3MOS sensors suck in visual info through the Leica lens and the result is brilliant, true-to-life colour in full HD.

This SD card-based model captures the AVCHD video format at 17MbpS. That falls short of the Canon's 24MbpS, but this slight deficiency is more than balanced out by the sheer comfort of using it. The curved indent in the body allows your hand to fit beautifully into the strap with the zoom and record control perfectly placed.

It can also bust out compact-earn-equalling, 10.6-meg stills - the HFll only musters three megs- and the 12X optical zoom for both photo and video more than doubles that on offer from the JVC model.

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Features such as image stabilisation, face detection and the nifty target selector, which allows you to select the focus of your lens simply by tapping the touchscreen, are all massive plus points. Intelligent contrast control works under certain conditions, although we noticed a big shift when panning around differentlylit areas. A host of easy-to-use automatic and manual shooting options are also housed inside the exemplary, touchscreen interface.

Panasonic's claims of noise-free shooting in low light are a little bold, but well-lit indoor and outdoor footage looks fabulously clear when connected to an HDTV. Finally, should you wish to use an external mic or headphones you'll need the dearer HS300 model. The internal mic does perform manfully, though.