The Panasonic SDR-H40 is an entry-level DV camcorder and is another entry into the increasingly popular hard disk drive market. It is designed to compete with the low-end Everio range from JVC and Sony's standard definition HDD camcorders.

The SDR-H40 offers a slightly improved optical setup on last year's Panasonic models, boasting a 1/6-inch CCD with a gross pixel count of 800,000. This translates to 290,000 effective pixels in 4:3 format, and 380,000 effective pixels in 16:9 widescreen. This DV camcorder offers a powerful 42x optical zoom and an impressive optical image stabilization system, which Panasonic claims achieves eight times the correction rate managed by the company's previous OIS. We can tell you that even at the outer limit of the optical zoom, the stabilization system does a superb job at eradicating unwanted camera shakes during handheld shooting.

The Panasonic SDR-H40 features a built in 40GB hard disk drive. This is large enough to store up to 36 hours of video at the lowest quality setting. The unit can also record short video clips or digital stills images to SD or SDHC memory cards. This is no hybrid unit, though: The SDR-H40 is capable of snapping stills at a maximum resolution of just 640x480 pixels. That's sufficient quality for attaching an image to an email, but little else. This DV camcorder is incapable of recording video and taking stills at the same time, so you may as well keep your dedicated digital stills camera on hand.

The SDR-H40 is slightly larger and heavier than the entry-level Everio models, which may not be a bad thing if you have large hands. The joystick control is easy to operate and many people will undoubtedly prefer it over the touch screen systems employed by other manufacturers.

The menu system is intuitive, and as well as point-and-shoot simplicity, the Panasonic SDR-H40 offers a solid array of manual controls to boot. One area where the unit falls down on user-friendliness, however, is transferring video to a home computer. The battery needs to be removed, an adapter inserted into the battery slot and then the AC power adapter attached. If you plan on transferring video on the go, you'll need to make sure you keep the AC adapter with you.

We liked the inclusion of a one-touch copying feature, though. This enables you to hook the camcorder up to a DVD burner via USB and copy recordings to a DVD by simply pressing a button. Panasonic's Anti-Shock Shield helps protects the hard disk drive against jolts and the Drop Detect function senses if the camera is falling and automatically protects the hard disk and backs up any data.

The quality of video footage was solid in good lighting conditions, and the built-in microphone did a fine job at reducing wind noise. Low light recording is more in line with other entry level units. The Panasonic SDR-H40 is an inexpensive HDD DV camcorder that handles well and offers some surprisingly advanced features for the price.

Pros: Large storage capacity, great handling, powerful zoom and impressive OIS
Cons: Poor low light performance, low-quality stills

Warranty
1 year, parts and labor