Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony DCR-TRV80 MiniDV Camcorder

this miniCV camera is worth its weight in gold, perhaps the best single CCD one you can get at the moment?
If you want to be serious about making a DVD, then you need widescreen, and this camera has it natively - ie. doesn't crop the picture, but has widescreen CCD sensor and outputs anamorphic video.
nightshot and super-nightshot modes work well, but you can also use slow-shutter modes at night and retain colour.
the camera stores stills on a memory stick (slot is "pro" compatible), and with the supplied USB cable acts as a disk drive for windows (special driver required), and also as a webcam streaming 320x240 video (with sound) over the USB.
A useful feature is that it will accept analogue in and output it as firewire, so that you can capture digital video from an older camcorder.
I've battled-tested it on holiday, recording a wedding, and it worked perfectly - battery life indicator works very well - the LCD screen is large and clear.
I've not used the bluetooth feature.
The only niggle is the menu layouts and the use of the touch-screen, it could be better - Sony removed the menu wheel system and could have put more thought into how they reproduced it on the touch-screen.

highly recommended!

After a fortnight of searching the Web for reviews and which camera to buy i focused on Two both sony's, the TRV-355 and the TRV-80. Both looked good but I decided to spend the extra money and go for the TRV-80.

WOW what a camera first thing i noticed was the location of all the buttons everything is nicely placed even for my fat fingers. Zoom is smooth although at x120 digital zoom the quality seems to fade a bit.
The colour view finder is great and helps to save on battery life.
One of my favorite features is the 3.5" screen this thing is huge! I was concerned from other reviews complaining about the use of touch-stick. You only really need it with the browser, other than that finger use is fine on main functions.

Having a 2Meg CCD the quality is superb although being my first camera i cant compare it to any others. But i'm glad i spent the extra money over the std 800,000 CCD

I'm looking to use this camera for film editing on my PC, the main reasons i looked at the these two cameras. Again the TRV-80 didn't disapoint with ilink and blue tooth for connection. Also I found that i can access the internet with the camera and post home the data on my memory stick or just browse the Web.

Too be honest this camera has more features than i could have dreamt for and does the lot.

Couple of limitations which need upgrading when i get the money will be the battery and memory card, both of which have decent size upgrades 1GB memory stick :). Oh and make sure you order a tape with the camera as one isn't included.

So far its been far better than I could have hoped for, two thumbs up!