Positives: Works fast power off-on time, record start, aofutocus are all very fast. Great white balance in daylight/well-lit situations better than the Sony FX1 and HC3. Excellent resolution and contrast. Unbelievably small size makes traveling easy you will end up taking the video camera everywhere with you instead of leaving it behind. Allows Contrast, Sharpness, Brightness, and Color Saturation picture adjustments to suit your style of video that is not available on the Sony HC3 (closest competing model that I compared with). Great automatic mode that will decrease the shutter speed to 1/30th of a second in order to improve low light video (great feature because it saves the user from having to go into semi-manual mode in order to get decent low-light footage). The Super Optical Stabilization works better than in most cameras, considering the small size/vertical orientation of the camcorder. Built-in light definitely improves picture quality when filming casual footage of friends/family without it, you would not see anything. Negatives: Slightly difficult to hold for those with large hands. Buttons are too small. Very Low light video is not just grainy and noisy, but has vertical bands in it also. Colors may appear more muted than on a 3CCD camcorder if the subject is not well-lit. White balance in low-light is poor, video quality improves significantly if manual white balance is used in those situations. I also own a Sony HDR-FX1 HDV Video Camera and used that as a reasonable basis of comparison.