In their Sony HDR-CX7 review, DMN takes you through a shooting and editing experience with Sony’s first Memory Stick Pro Duo camcorder. The review focuses not only on the functionality and quality side of things, but also on the editing side.

This Sony HDR-CX7 review is probably the first I’ve seen to state, “At higher bitrates (15Mbps, which is all we ended up using), the image is nearly the quality of HDV, at roughly double the compression.” Most other reviews of AVCHD camcorders find glaring differences between the two formats, but perhaps Sony is upping the standard with the CX7.

Regardless, in low-light testing, the reviewer gave HDV the win over AVCHD. The Sony HDR-CX7 had an inferior image with more noise when compared.

Probably the most interesting piece of this Sony HDR-CX7 review was the editing experience. Footage imported with no problem into Sony Vegas, which only supports Sony AVCHD camcorders. Editing was fine, although on the reviewer’s slower laptop it only played back at around 8fps, so make sure you have a somewhat beefy computer if you want to get the best experience.

Rendering the Sony HDR-CX7’s footage was where the real time came in, as 7 minutes of AVCHD footage took 20 minutes to render to standard definition, and a YouTube version took 30 minutes. A faster computer would definitely make this go a lot faster, and it’s one of those things you can start and walk away from until it is done.

The Sony HDR-CX7 looks like a camcorder one could really enjoy even with the few caveats it has. Definitely worth a look if you are in the market.

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