Sony HDR-CX730E review

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.