Sony’s HDR-XR520V, selling for roughly $1500, is a good travel companion, thanks to its new added feature – the built-in GPS mapping system. Moreover, it has much more to recommend it. From sharp video quality and a 240 GB hard disk drive to a wealth of video features, the HDR-XR520V is a worthy addition to Sony’s camcorder family. The design of external controls is a gleaming indication that this camcorder appeals to the advanced tourist crowd, rather than the budget filmmaker brigade.

The Panasonic SDR-H60 Camcorder is a full featured camcorder that packs many elements for a very competitive price. This camcorder is Panasonic’s number one single-chip, standard definition hard drive camcorder. Its 60GB hard drive provides enough space for recording 14hrs of high quality videos and 54hrs of low quality videos. If that is not enough, you can continue recording in MPEG 2 format thru an SD or SDHC memory card that you can place in its built-in memory slot.

The Panasonic HDC-HS300 is the company’s top camcorder for 2009 and easily fits in the first-class camcorder category. With a price range of $1200-$1499, the HDC-HS300 brims with features and manual controls and boasts an amazing video quality. The HDC-HS300 also features Panasonic’s intelligent Auto (iA) capability and the Advanced Optical Image Stabilization (Advanced OIS) which equips the camcorder with excellent shake-reduction capabilities.

The Panasonic HDC-HS9 is a very compact High Definition camcorder. The HDC-HS9 qualifies as a Hybrid camcorder because it can record on both an internal hard disk and removable flash memory cards. While this hybrid model does overcome some of the drawbacks of hard drive camcorders, the hard disk still adds to the size and cost of the device. The HDC-HS9 is roughly $300 more than the equivalent HDC-SD9 which could easily buy two 32GB SDHC cards. One of the better features of this camcorder is its high quality picture and sound. It allows you to set the camcorder at a Digital Cinema mode and shoot in the progressive 1080/25p format (25 frames per second). The Progressive scanning captures pictures that have film-like quality. The colors are vivid and the pictures are clear and crisp.

The popularity of Flash camcorders and Hard Drive camcorders is rapidly increasing. The question is which one should you buy? It’s a tough decision because Hard Drive and Flash camcorders have so much in common that there is really very little different about them. They both offer instant access to the video that you’ve recorded, High Definition (up to 1080P) recording, great accessibility from your computer, and many more features. In fact, most manufacturers use the same optics and electronics to produce a HDD version and Flash version of the same camcorder, so the only real difference between the two is where they store their video and the implications that has on how you use the device.