Labs

This upright-styled camcorder is the smallest on test, but still packs in all the features you'd expect. There's a 2.5in LCD display and colour viewfinder, both of which are extremely bright. So too is the front-mounted light for illuminating dark subjects, although the DX28 rarely needs it.

With so much packed into such a small space, something had to give. One casualty is the zoom range. At 12x multiplication this

The small design has also left little room for controls. Five buttons and a navigation pad are crowded onto the back of the camera, and using them can be fiddly. There's no room for a navigation wheel as on the JVC GR-D23 (page 60) or the Canon cameras (pages 58 and 61).

On the plus side, outdoor shots have plenty of contrast and natural colours, while indoor shots were superbly exposed and showed barely any signs of speckly image 'noise'. However, the lack of sharpness at extreme zoom settings took the shine off an otherwise fine performance, and JVC's digital image stabilisation isn't as effective as Canon's. Sound quality was disappointing too, with a lack of bass making everything sound weak, while the microphone picked up quite a lot of motor noise.

The JVC's compact design is extremely attractive, but its lack of DV-in capability on the FireWire port is another reason why this camera is best avoided.