Sony HDR-PJ30V Review

Introduction

In addition to the PJ30V, Sony has three other “projector cams” in its 2011 Handycam line. The HDR-PJ50V has the same features as the PJ30V, except it is loaded with a 220GB internal hard drive that makes it a bit larger and heavier (and $50 more expensive). The HDR-PJ10 is the cheapest of the three models (around $700), but it does not have a GPS function and lacks a number of other features found on Sony’s other two projector-camcorders.

Design & Usability

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A simple-to-use camcorder that doesn't feel great in the hand

The PJ30V has plenty of good design traits: its body feels durable, its touchscreen is responsive, and the camcorder is lighter than average for a mid-range model. What isn't good is the flimsy handstrap that Sony slapped onto the side of the PJ30V. The strap is both thinner and less comfortable than what Sony offered in the past, and this cutback may take a toll on the back of your hand. The inside of the strap is very rigid due to the presence of a hard casing for the tip of the built-in USB cable to snap into. The presence of this USB cable is a great idea, but Sony shouldn't have sacrificed this much comfort to make it happen.

As far as features go, the HDR-PJ30V has a few different frame rate options, which is really cool for people who want to mimic that 24 frames-per-second effect of film, but the camcorder has little in the way of manual controls. There are no advanced methods for adjusting shutter speed or aperture, and most of the controls found on the camcorder are nothing more than enhanced automatic functions.

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Features

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The projector is an expensive gimmick, but it's also kinda fun.

Nope, this isn't an elaborate joke. The HDR-PJ30V actually comes with a built-in projector for playing back videos. It's a cool feature, for sure, but the system also has an abundance of limitations. The projector interface is not easy to use, unless you have access to the camcorder's provided remote control, and the touchscreen is inactive whenever the PJ30V is projecting video. This means the only way to navigate your clips during playback is by using the zoom toggle to cycle through videos and pressing the photo shutter button to select a video for playback. Using the remote does make things a lot simpler, but it's still not a good playback system.

Projecting your clips on a white background from about 5 feet away will result in video that looks pretty good, but the content won't look nearly as sharp as watching your videos on an HDTV. The built-in projector also has no controls over setting the zoom, image position, color correction, or keystone effect for the projected video image. All you can do is use a tiny focus slider on the top of the LCD panel to bring your projections into focus. The slider worked fine for the most part, and you can also tilt the LCD panel a bit in order to position the projected image better.

Performance

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Decent image quality, but the performance from Canon and Panasonic's competition was better

The HDR-PJ30V produced fairly vivid colors, but the camcorder had problems with color accuracy. This led to the PJ30V being outscored in our color tests by the competition, and by a significant margin to boot. Noise was also a problem with the camcorder, both in low light and bright light, so you can't expect to capture perfectly-clean images with the PJ30V.

Sharpness and motion were better for the HDR-PJ30V's videos, although the camcorder continued to play second-fiddle to the competition from Canon and Panasonic. Motion got a significant boost thanks to the camcorder's plentiful recording options, including new 60p and 24p frame rate settings. These modes bring out the best performance the PJ30V is capable of, and the 60p setting recorded moving subjects with near-perfect smoothness.

Conclusion

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With its projector capabilities and multiple frame rate options, the PJ30V is more unique than most camcorders of its class. But that doesn't mean it's a better product.

The Sony Handycam HDR-PJ30V is a middling camcorder. Its built-in projector is a cool feature, but it doesn't warrant the $950 price tag that comes with the model. The camcorder handled most of our tests with passable results, and it produced some excellent numbers in motion and stabilization, but the overall performance from the PJ30V was not up to snuff. Mid-range camcorders from Canon (Vixia HF M40) and Panasonic (HDC-TM90) both did better in our tests—particularly in low light—and are available at much lower costs than the PJ30V. In fact, the PJ30V is closer in price to Panasonic’s high-end model, the HDC-TM900. And if you can get a camcorder of that quality for the same price, then that puts the HDR-PJ30V in an unfortunate limbo.

Then again, there is some kind of allure to that gimmick of a projector. At least this feature, along with the ability to record video with 60p and 24p frame rates, helps make the HDR-PJ30V stand out from the crowd. The Panasonic HDC-TM90 can record 60p, and the Canon HF M40 can record 24p, but the Sony HDR-PJ30V is the only mid-range model of the bunch that can do both. So, if you are a lover of multiple frame rates, then there is some extra incentive to go with the PJ30V.

Science Introduction

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The PJ30V came in a notch behind the competition on most of our tests, but it did excel in two areas: motion and stabilization. The camcorder's 60p and 24p frame rate options offered a significant boost to motion, while Sony's optical SteadyShot image stabilization system somehow worked wonders in our test. The rest of the camcorder's results, though, weren't that impressive. Color accuracy was below average, low light performance was riddled with noise, and the camcorder failed to capture video that was as sharp as the competition.

Projector Performance

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Is that tiny projector actually any good? Not really, but it's still fun to use.

The projector on the HDR-PJ30V is, well, it's about as good as you expect a tiny projector that's built onto a camcorder to be. Despite its limitations, I still had fun using the projector to watch video at a short range. Projecting your clips on a white background from about five feet away will result in video that looks decent, but the videos do show a significant loss of sharpness. When watching our sharpness videos via the built-in projector, we noticed a drop in sharpness of about 25% compared to what we saw on our HDTV. This makes sense, as the projector outputs at a resolution of just 640 × 360 (instead of 1920 × 1080 like an HDMI signal will give you).

Our colleagues over at VideoProjectorInfo.com took a look at the PJ30V's projector to in order for us to get a better idea of its performance. They weren’t impressed with the projector’s brightness—it measured an awful seven lux when projected from 12 feet away—but they conceded that Sony’s recommendation of a projection distance of 2 – 10 feet produced much better results. Ideally, you want to use the PJ30V’s projector from about five feet away. This resulted in nearly triple the brightness of the image, although the picture was much smaller. At 2 feet away from a screen, the image projected by the PJ30V will cover a screen area slightly under one foot. At ten feet away, this coverage increases to five feet. Neither of these sizes are very impressive, as most dedicated projectors will give you a much larger image to work with (and you won’t have to be so far away from the screen).

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Stabilization Performance

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The optical SteadyShot on the PJ30V exceeded our expectations.

The Sony PJ30V is equipped with SteadyShot optical image stabilization (OIS), and the camcorder did an excellent job in our stabilization test. Running the camcorder through our low shake test, which is meant to mimic the movement of a shaky hand, the PJ30V’s standard OIS setting reduced 77% of the shake. In our high shake test, which puts the camcorder through a far more rigorous motion, the regular OIS reduced 79% of the shake. Both of these are excellent numbers that place the PJ30V in the upper echelon of camcorders with OIS.

Using the active stabilization mode on the HDR-PJ30V actually resulted in worse stabilization performance for the camcorder. The numbers weren’t all that different—71% reduction in low shake, 73% reduction in high shake—but they were still a bit lower than the standard OIS on the camcorder. Active mode also appears to use a combination of digital and optical stabilization systems, and when the mode is turned on the camcorder automatically gets a 5x bump in zoom (Sony calls this “enhanced zoom” because it isn’t optical, but it shouldn’t result in image degradation). We recommend sticking with the standard OIS if you can help it, as it did a perfectly fine job in our testing.

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Low Light Performance

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Not spectacular, but the PJ30V didn't do to much worse than your average mid-range camcorder in low light

The HDR-PJ30V’s results in our low light sensitivity test were disappointing, but the camcorder did manage to put up stronger numbers than its higher-end cousin, the Sony HDR-CX700V, in this test. In auto mode and using zoom, the PJ30V required 28 lux of light to illuminate our test chart so that it registered 50 IRE on our waveform monitor (the standard minimum illumination for a video broadcast). After pulling the zoom back so the PJ30V could use its widest aperture, the camcorder needed just 11 lux to illuminate the chart adequately. Recording using zoom but using the PJ30V’s 24p frame rate gave the camcorder a slight boost in this test as well: the camcorder needed 23 lux of light to hit 50 IRE using its 24p record mode.

None of these numbers are fantastic, particularly when compared to the excellent Canon HF M40, which is one of the strongest low light camcorders so far this year. The Panasonic HDC-TM90 also did better on this test, although its numbers weren’t stellar like the Canon HF M40 (which needed just 5 lux—a very low amount of light—to illuminate the chart accordingly).

With noise, the HDR-PJ30V averaged 1.6% noise levels in low light, which is a significant increase over its 0.7% noise levels in bright light. Still, this low light noise level isn’t all that bad—despite the fact that it is more noise than we measured on the competition. Color results in low light for the Sony PJ30V were also not strong. The camcorder registered a color error of 6.24 in this test, that’s nearly a point and a half higher than its bright light color results, and a saturation level of 69%.

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