JVC GR-DVL120U

With a price of about $500, the GR-DVL120U is less expensive than the other camcorders we've reviewed by a significant margin. However, many features are missing from this model.

On the plus side, the quality of the recorded video is good, and the built-in microphone located above the lens captures adequate sound. The LCD screen is fairly bright but difficult to view in direct sunlight, and at 2.5 inches it is a little smaller than the screens on camcorders of similar size (such as the Panasonic PV-DV702); it's still big enough for you to see what's going on, however. This model has the biggest optical zoom of any camcorder we've seen: 16X instead of the usual 10X. It also has a digital zoom of up to 700X--but like all digital zooms, the higher settings produce such poor-quality video that they are absolutely useless.

On the downside, the GR-DVL120U has no memory card slot (though you can record still images to tape at the same resolution as normal video); it also has no composite or S-Video input, so you can't use it to copy analog tapes onto digital tape.