Panasonic really went to town updating the internal specs for its new mid-range HD camcorder line for the consumer market.

The Panasonic HDC-SD60 features a larger, 1/4.1-inch CMOS sensor, and it includes a 25x optical zoom lens (up from 16x on last year's models) and it really shows when using macro mode to capture particularly close up animated activities.

The HDC-SD60 was only released into the UK market in March 2010 and as yet, we have yet to find a better camcorder for the pricetag.

The Panasonic SD60 camcorder uses the industry standard AVCHD file format to capture video in MPEG4 with H.264 and bundles software to enable you to author HD video on a standard DVD disk (limits HD video to 0.5 hours per DVD to maintain the quality).

Panasonic has not skimped on features on this camcorder with rapid burst stills possible to capture the best live action still pictures and a great editing suite to bring your home movies alive.

This was our camera of choice in advance of holidaying in France and we shall upload our own video in due course to let you be the judge. We have certainly been impresseed and believe that you will be too. Gone are the days of grainy DVD when you take advantage of the 1080p ... yes it is progressive rather than interlaced video. As we write, even the geniuses at Sony have not managed to manufacture camcorders beyond 1080 interlaced.