Sony DCR-SX40

The Sony DCR-SX40 is a 4GB Handycam Camcorder. This piece retails at $270 and was released in 2009. It has a 60x optical zoom, which is one of the highest ever, and a digital zoom of 2000x (zoom power becomes subject to diminishing return quickly though since at high levels of zoom it becomes really hard to hold the camera stable).

 The 4GB of flash memory is nothing impressive if compared with the 16 GB of Samsung SMX-F34BN (which is only $30 extra). There doesn't seem to be much feedback by users on this device on online forums.  Most Sony camcorders come as less feature rich than its counterparts and are still more expensive. However, in general consumers tend to be happier with the Sony camcorders because it seems to provide better quality in the features it offers.