The Sony DCR-SX60 palm-sized camcorder offers easy touch screen navigation, great auto mode and a highly developed videography structure.  Its simple, well-organized design has a nice layout with easy-to-navigate buttons.  The DCR-SX60’s Easy Mode makes basic recording simple, even for users new to the Sony architecture.

This camcorder’s 1/8-inch CCD imaging sensor records in MPEG2 format.  Its recording quality settings, HQ (9Mbps), SP (6Mbps) and LP (3Mbps), mimic other Sony camcorders.

This SX60 Handycam has a 16GB internal memory as its primary recording media.  To cover birthdays/parties/household events, the storage space will be enough to free you from worrying about those extra memory cards, tapes or disks you would normally worry about when using a MiniDV or DVD camcorder.

This camcorder is small and lightweight, making it perfect for travel or vacation.  It only weighs 240g, including the battery.

The Tool Tips and Scene Modes facilitate easy recording.  Sony has included Tool Tips within each Option menu to show how each selection works.  The menu architecture is easy to memorize with a few options to navigate.  A Help button inside the Home menu will aid you with some of the more complex features.  With a simple tap on an item, it will show an explanatory description at the bottom of the LCD.  Although these Tool Tips and descriptions are not very detailed, it will help educate new users to each function.

The Sony DCR-SX60 does not have any color modes or image effect controls.  Color accuracy may be a bit below average, especially in purple and green hues.  Although the DCR-SX60 may not have agreeable color accuracy, its color reproduction still looks quite good.

The DCR-SX60’s noise reduction also performs below par.  The camcorder has a tendency to obscure some fine details when recording videos, even in bright light environments, causing mediocre results.  What’s good with this device is that it retains the same performance, even when shooting in low light conditions, despite its low noise reduction capability.

The DCR-SX60 has a 2.7-inch touch screen LCD with a resolution of 123,200 pixels.  Users with large fingers may find it tricky to navigate around the menu using the camcorder’s small touch screen LCD.  The camcorder does not have a viewfinder as an alternative monitoring tool.  If you purchase this camcorder, you will have to make sure the LCD is always clean and in perfect condition, as you will be relying on its display for everything.

Sony knows how to bring innovation to its family of camcorders.  The DCR-SX60 has a backlight feature and a manual LCD brightness adjustment.  You can set the backlight feature to either normal or bright depending on your preference.  Sony also added an LCD color tool that will allow you to adjust color intensity to one of 16 levels.  What’s more amazing is the fact that many expensive high-definition camcorders don’t have all of these options incorporated in their packages.  Users must realize that adjustments made to the LCD color intensity do not affect the final footage.  A warning for new users using this feature; this may give you a false impression of what your footage will look like.

Like any Sony camcorders, the DCR-SX60 also has several scene modes to select.  Selections include Portrait, Spotlight, Sports, Beach, Snow, Twilight, Candle, Sunrise & Sunset, Fireworks and Landscape.  You may also use all scene modes in photo mode.  These scene modes automatically adjust the shutter speed, white balance and color tones to optimize the results in either video or still images.

The DCR-SX60 also features a 60x optical zoom.  This may not be as impressive as Panasonic’s SDR-S26’s 70x optical zoom but this is more than what many camcorders in its price range can offer.  The 60x optical zoom capability outperforms many of its competitors like the Samsung SMX-F34 with 34x optical zoom, the Canon FS200 with 37x optical zoom or the JVC GZ-MS130 with 35x optical zoom.

Another smart feature of the DCR-SX60 is the Spot Focus.  With a simple tap on any portion of the screen that you want to focus, the camcorder will automatically do it for you.  The camcorder also features a Spot Meter function that acts like the Spot Focus except that it adjusts the exposure level instead of the focus.  Like the Spot Focus feature, you can manually set the exposure on DCR-SX60 using its touch screen LCD.  Just tap one of the two touch screen buttons to make the image darker or brighter.  However, there is no numeric display on the LCD to gauge your level of exposure.  When using this feature you will mainly rely on counting the number of taps you made in adjusting the exposure setting.  There are 28 increments in this setting.

The DCR-SX60 does not have a manual control for aperture.  It is a fixed aperture camcorder.  An internal process automatically selects the aperture for you; thus, you will not be able to see the selected f-stop.  You may also find this feature in both HDR-XR520 and HDR-CX520 camcorders.  As comparison, Canon camcorders include Aperture Priority function only on its high definition models while standard definition camcorders from Panasonic, JVC and Samsung all have direct aperture control.

The DCR-SX60 ships with an NP-FH30 battery that will last for approximately 130 minutes of extensive use.  This battery life is considerably shorter compared to other camcorders in its category; like the Canon FS200 and Samsung SMX-F34 batteries that can almost double its performance.  The camcorder holds the battery in its open-back battery compartment that gives you the capability to upgrade to a larger battery for longer recording time.

Sony DCR-SX60 records audio through a built-in 2-channel Dolby microphone mounted at the front of the camcorder.  The camcorder however, offers very few audio features, with no mic jack or headphone jack to cater to additional audio accessories.  It also doesn’t have an accessory shoe that can accommodate an external mic or other Sony accessories.

Overall, the SX60 is a good camcorder for beginners with its Tool Tips, ease of use and portability.  You can pack your bag, place this camcorder in your purse, and then off you go.

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Technical Specifications

Hardware

• Manual / Auto Lens Cover : Manual
• Media Card slot : Memory Stick PRO Duo™ Media¹