It’s hard to imagine a better Father’s Day gift for dad than preserving family memories with a cool new gadget. A new high definition video camera is the perfect complement to the HDTV and Blu-ray player that mysteriously showed up in the living room last year. This year’s digital camcorders offer ultimate portability, full high definition recording (1080p), face tracking, and automatic smile detection. Choosing the best camcorder can be difficult, and June 21st is just around the corner, so to simplify your decision here are 5 of the best camcorders for dads.

The Canon VIXIA HF S100 brings pro level quality to the prosumer market at an amazingly affordable price. Despite a few usability issues this camcorder’s quality more than makes up for its few flaws.