Annual Best Products of the Year

So another year has come and gone, and it has brought a number of products through our doors. Many were good. Some were, um, not as good. We've culled it down, argued about it and narrowed it down to these, the Best Products of the Year, as selected by the editors of Videomaker.

A caveat: Since many manufacturers work from an 18-month product release, and any cycle of new video products may be three months old or longer by the time our reviews hit the newsstands, we judged our Top Pick choices by those products that passed through the Videomaker doors within the 2008 year.

Panasonic AG-HMC150
$3,995 - www.panasonic.com
The Panasonic AG-HMC150 is a magnificent camcorder that allows the AVCHD format to come into its own. It's a worthy successor for the venerable DVX100 family of camcorders, and we expect that it won't take long for the huge fan base that the DVX family has amassed to be converted to the new family.

Read Videomaker's review of the Panasonic AG-HMC150.

JVC GZ-HD40
$1,300 - www.jvc.com
Imagine we could shoot for an eternity, the video still looked good and we never had to change tapes! Tape constraints would go away, video quality issues would disappear and we could always shoot on the go. JVC's GZ-HD40 was the first model to solve the riddle and allow shooters up to 50 hours of recording time, as well as dual formats to choose from to make life easier on both videographers and editors. It handled great, gave us options and looked amazing.

Read Videomaker's review of the JVC GZ-HD40.

Sony PMW-EX1
$6,850 - http://bssc.sel.sony.com
There's so much new here, where do we start? We think SxS is a media format that is going places. It's a 3-chipper that uses 1/2" CMOS chips. It can record full 1920x1080 at 35Mbps VBR using MPEG-2 compression. And it's a deal! There's no other camcorder we can think of at the moment with these capabilities for a price anywhere near this.

Read Videomaker's review of the Sony PMW-EX1.

Panasonic HDC-HS100
$1,200 - www.panasonic.com
Having a focusable lens on a consumer camcorder changes the spectrum of what a consumer model should be and could be. With a precise feel and undeniable ease, Panasonic's HS100 brought every aspect of the game into play. We liked everything here and were surprised by a lot of the structural differences that made operating the model very easy and separated it from the pack.

Read Videomaker's review of the Panasonic HDC-HS100.

Canon HR10
$1,199 - www.usa.canon.com
Disc camcorders are unique in that they are the next generation of what VHS-C was: a medium where you can shoot, then pop the media out of your camcorder and watch what was just shot on a home player. The AVCHD format data recorded to 8cm DVD by the Canon HR10 can be played in all its high-definition glory on any Blu-ray Disc player. The HR10 is the best disc camcorder we've seen this year - it's got a great optical system and is very easy to use.

Read Videomaker's review of the Canon HR10.