Digital Trends

Sony HDR-CX7 August 13th, 2007 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

The new HDR-CX7 is beautiful—if a camcorder can be given such a designation. The glossy all-black body has swooping lines and an elegance that lets everyone know you’re holding a state-of-the-art piece of electronics. As a matter of fact, great minds must think alike since the CX7 looks very similar to Panasonic’s newest flash-memory camcorder, the HDC-SD5 ($999 USD, due September). Although the pair looks similar there are very different technologies that we’ll go into a bit. Back to the CX7…

This camcorder is truly palm-sized, measuring 2.75 x 2.75 x 5.25 (WHD, in inches), tipping the scales at 15 ounces including battery, card and strap. As noted, the all-black body has glossy and textured portions that are very attractive. What can I say? I liked it.

The front is totally dominated by the 10x Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T* lens (pronounced T star). The lens can hit a reasonable 20x digitally but as always, keep the digital zoom turned off since it degrades picture quality. Next to the lens is a flash for still photos; the camcorder does not have an enhancement light but you can easily connect an optional light because there’s a hot accessory shoe on the top of the unit. Also on the top is a 5.1-channel surround sound mic, a zoom toggle switch and a button for taking individual snapshots.

On the left side is the swing out 2.7-inch touchscreen LCD monitor rated 211K pixels. It uses Sony’s Clear LCD Photo Plus technology and the quality is quite good. The company has improved the onscreen menu system and it’s very simple to use offering quick access for changing all the parameters you’d like including nine Scene Modes. To left of the screen are four buttons on the bezel including Home that gets you to the main menu page, wide/tele buttons to adjust the zoom with left hand and a start/stop button. On the body are a number of buttons for engaging backlight compensation, a Display key to change the amount of clutter on the LCD and another for quick access to the scenes you’ve shot. There’s also a Playback button and a switch to engage the NightShot option. This lets you record in almost total darkness but the video is a greenish monotone. The last control is the Easy button that puts the camcorder is full auto mode, the setting the vast majority of people use. Here the camcorder does all the work and you simply hit record, adjust the zoom and you can unleash your inner Brett Ratner. By the way, the action director started his career at 8 with a Panasonic camcorder so there’s always hope! Also here is the Memory Stick Pro Duo card slot. A 4 gig card holds 30 minutes at the highest resolution. Plan on spending around $80 USD for one since no card is supplied. Better yet, if you’re spending $1,200 USD for a camcorder, have the dealer throw one in for free to seal the deal.

When the LCD is closed there are several logos with the most prominent saying the camcorder is an AVCHD model which it means it records 1440 x 1080i video using the MPEG-4 H.264 format. The right side has the comfortable strap and a Handycam logo on the body. On the back is a slot for the rechargeable lithium ion battery which barely protrudes. This is design is becoming much more common from more manufacturers and it’s very welcome. To the left of the battery are compartments for DC-in and HDMI/AV out. You’ll also find the main mode dial (movie, still, on/off) and the record button. There are also three lights on the back edge that indicate which mode you’re in and a charge indicator.

One of the reasons the HDR-CX7 is so compact is the fact it comes with a dock that has connections for USB, A/V, component outs and a DC-in to recharge the battery. There’s no Firewire connection with this one. On the dock is a Disc Burn button that we’ll discuss in a bit.

The HDR-CX7 comes with the basics including the dock, battery, power cord, USB, component and A/V cables as well as a remote. There’s a basic 40-page Operating Guide and a more in-depth manual on the supplied CD-ROM. As readers know, I’m not a big fan of disc-based manuals since most people don’t lug their laptops with them on a shoot. The disc also has Picture Motion Browser Ver. 2.1.01, a very basic—and slow loading--program for importing files. I just wish Sony would cut a deal with a quality video editing outfit and supply a “teaser” program rather than this or even a “lite” version of its Vegas software. I guess it wouldn’t be a day without sunshine if you couldn’t complain about Sony in one way or another. We’ll get to a bigger issue in the next section.

That said, I charged the battery, popped in a 4GB card and went to the ball game to try this one out.

Image Courtesy of Sony