Sony HDR-CX730E review

Apart from the HDR-TD20VE, which is designed specifically for 3D, the HDR-730XE is the top of Sony’s current camcorder range. It’s a Full HD camcorder with a 10x optical zoom, 17x zoom, a back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor and plenty of I/O ports, as well as a powered accessory shoe. There’s also an electronic viewfinder, and all this puts it up against Panasonic’s range-topping HC-X900. There’s one big difference; instead of the Panasonic camcorder’s separate 1/4.1in sensors for red, green and blue light, the Sony camcorder has a single, large 1/2.88in sensor.

The camcorder’s video quality is incredible. Footage looks natural, as if you’re viewing the scene with your own eyes, and the colours are astoundingly well reproduced. Not just the colours of the objects in immediate focus, but the yellow of a van in the distance, the blues, whites and greys of the clouds overhead and the greens of faraway trees. The detail is exquisite too, and the HDR-CX730E captures footage that’s truly worthy of the label Full HD. There are few signs of compression and the clarity with which scenes are rendered is breathtaking.

The little details impressed us even more, such as the clean, smooth edges of shadows dancing across the roof of a moving taxi or the brickwork of an adjacent building. These are things you don’t notice at the time, but nothing escaped the HDR-CX730E’s attention.

A prime reason for the HDR-CX730E’s excellent image quality is its image stabilisation system, which is set to Active by default. As soon as you open the touchscreen monitor you can see the image stabiliser working its magic, keeping the camcorder as steady as possible and giving footage smooth, fluid motion. This is one of the best image stabilisers we’ve seen. When filming when walking around, it’s even better than Panasonic’s image stabilisation at avoiding the shakes.

Of course, the HDR-CX730E isn’t perfect. The camcorder’s autofocus sometimes struggled while shooting indoors in relatively enclosed spaces, such as stairwells and our lift, which is something its closest rival – the Panasonic HC-X900 – didn’t do. As with all camcorders there’s some noise in footage shot in very low light but, here again, Sony’s model trumps the HC-X900 for low-light footage.

Just as impressive is the HDR-CX730E’s high-resolution 921,600-pixel touchscreen display. Not only does it look fantastic, but its icons and menu items are refreshingly legible and attractive, and are good enough to shame some smartphones. You access the menus through the touchscreen and they’re well organised and easy to navigate. The touchscreen is responsive for a resistive screen, but it’s easy to select the wrong option accidentally, an example being the ease with which the record button is pressed instead of the telephoto button. The HDR-CX730E also has an electronic viewfinder which displays information such the zoom meter and battery meter, but the display door must be closed in order to use it.

The camcorder’s 10x optical zoom lens maintains the HDR-CX730E’s high image quality even at full zoom. Active stabilisation, which stabilises vertical and horizontal shake, must be switched off in order to use only the optical zoom. Instead, you must use one of the other modes, such as the balanced SteadyShot mode, which is designed for zooming. When Active Stabilisation is enabled, the camera defaults to a digitally enhanced 17x zoom, which doesn’t affect image quality too much until the very end of its extension, at which point you get a slight halo effect on some objects and a softening of focus. The effect is so slight that you really only notice it if you pause the footage and look for examples.

As befits a high-end camcorder such as this, the HDR-CX730E has a wealth of connections, including a 3.5mm microphone input, a 3.5mm headphone output, A/V and HDMI outputs, a mini-USB port to connect to your PC and a powered accessory shoe. It also records 5.1 digital surround sound and the touchscreen displays a level meters for each of the five sound inputs so you can avoid clipping.

The HDR-CX730E’s excellent image quality, image stabilisation and touchscreen monitor, as well as its multiple I/O connections, great image stabilisation and terrific colour reproduction give us no option but to give it an Ultimate award. This is a true enthusiast’s camcorder that’s as much of a pleasure to use as its footage is to watch. The Panasonic HC-X900‘s autofocus sometimes works better than the HDR-CX730E’s and it comes close for image quality, but the HDR-CX730E’s footage has a vibrancy and realism that you can’t help but love.