Sanyo Xacti CG65

Holding a Sanyo Xacti CG65 is a pleasant experience that comes from a pistol-grip form factor; unique but functional. When everything is shrinking in size, Sanyo has made it a point to make the Xacti series a no-bull business, getting rid of hard drives or miniDVs to store information. And if you thought the trade-off meant reduction in quality, think again. But let me show you!

The digicam is light and compact enough to be easily shoved in your pocket with only a small bulge. The screen swivels and can be drawn out at various angles to keep you from straining your hands unnecessarily. It’s a 2.5-inch LCD display with 110,000 pixels. All the important buttons are placed within easy reach of your thumb.

The on/off button is hidden underneath the screen when shut, while the battery compartment at the bottom houses the memory card as well. That’s pretty much all that went into designing this baby, so let’s now look at its features.



Features
Offering a 6MP image sensor with 5x optical zoom, the CG65 features the all new high-precision large-scale integration engine III. All this is fine, but what you should know is that the digicam uses SD or SHDC cards to store information, allowing it to shed some weight. It uses the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 format to save videos, while the sound is compressed in 16-bit AAC format.

Obviously, you can also shoot still images. It has a 6MP CCD (1/2.5-inch) sensor. However, the camera uses a pixel-interpolation filter to convert images from 6MP to a recorded equivalent of 10MP. Yet, saturation in pictures weren’t that evident. Of course, you would pick this one up for video recording, so it hardly matters.

Video recording is fun, especially because of its form factor. This makes it very easy to carry around; I had it in my pocket at all times. You may also find comfort in the fact that shooting with the CG65 means less strain on your wrist.


The quality of the video is decent; not extraordinary, but not bad at all. The videos I shot had a lot of mosaic compression, but the colors were good (mind you, I didn’t say vibrant). The camera can shoot at a maximum resolution of 640x480 pixels. The lens takes some time to focus; only a fraction of a second, but it's noticeable.

Performance

Shooting in the night translates into grainy videos, especially in night mode. But then the camera has a lamp mode. In this mode, I think the camera drops the frame rate to get long exposure, making everything around you more exposed. Yet I wouldn’t recommend night shooting unless you have adequate lighting.

The camera won't disappoint you in ample light. So if you are going to shoot birthday parties and suchlike, then you will love the sharpness – but only in good lighting conditions. What I don’t like is that where there details it can’t capture, the camera will end up smoothening it.

The camera is fast – startup takes about a second, and shooting starts instantly. The camera uses one rechargeable Lithium battery that for some reason isn’t power hungry. I shot comfortably for more than two hours, and the battery still didn't die on me. About 3 minutes of video will consume roughly about 71MB, so with a 2GB card you should be able to get about 43 minutes.

The device costs Rs 23,990, which I think is the right price considering the form factor and its features. You could consider this, now that you know what it can do – and if fits the bill.