Sanyo Xacti WH1 HD Waterproof Camcorder

With the rains finally going strong in (most parts) of the country, a lot of people decide to keep their camcorders in the closets, in the fear that exposure to rain or moisture may damage their sensitive parts. This is a pity, as this can actually be the most adventurous season to shoot in.

Sanyo’s Xacti WH1, an HD camcorder that claims to be waterproof to upto 3 meters or 10 feet of water, can be the best gadget to buy this season. But is it a good camcorder or just a gimmick? That’s the question I’m looking to answer in this review.

Build
Unlike their previous Waterproof Camcorder, the CA65, the Xacti WH1 sports a more traditional design, with the palm-grip on the right and the screen flapping out on the left. Though this design seems a lot more comfortable for lengthy shoots, I really liked the casual feel of the CA65 as well. That said, the new design is an improvement.

Considering that the camera is waterproof, it’s obvious that it would be sealed from all sides. But what I like here is that the camera manages to keep everything safe from water, it doesn’t get painful to access the hidden parts. The battery, memory card, output ports are all quite easy to access, but of course, be careful not to compromise any of the sealed parts when in water.

What I did find odd, was that there’s no lens cap. It may not be the most important aspect of a camcorder, but it gets quite annoying wiping the fingerprints off the lens every time before using the camcorder.

The 2.5-inch screen sports a 4:3 aspect ratio, which seems quite odd considering that the camera’s native resolution is 1280x720 - a widescreen resolution.

The camcorder controls are very well placed, though they can get a bit confusing. For example, when going through the video menu, the play button doesn’t play the selected file, but the set button does. I’m not sure if it’s just me, but it took me a while before I figured out that the little ring around the set button was the navigational control. Still, once you get the hang of it, you will agree that the controls are comfortably placed.

Overall the Xacti WH1 isn’t exactly stylishly designed or looks like anything out of the ordinary. But considering that the meat of the camera is not in its looks, but its performance, I wouldn’t consider that a very negative point.
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Features
Of course, the most outstanding feature about the WH1 is that it’s waterproof upto 10 feet or 3 meters of water, which is enough for most people going for it. Of course, we wouldn’t just blindly believe the claim, so we did take it into a swimming pool, and used it while doing the underwater stroke. The WH1 worked flawlessly underwater without even a droplet entering any of the camera’s internal chambers.

Though the camera boasts HD video recording capabilities, it only shoots at a maximum resolution of 720p. Full HD would have been nice, but considering the camcorder’s price, it’s good enough. You can also set the resolution to 640x480 if you intend on saving memory space.

As a still camera the WH1 shoots at a maximum resolution of 2 megapixels, which isn’t really very impressive considering that it doesn’t take much to get a higher resolution into a CMOS sensor these days.

Performance
As an underwater camcorder, the WH1 was quite entertaining. Being carefree about your camcorder getting damaged while shooting fun videos at a family vacation is priceless. There were no issues with the underwater videos shot using the WH1.

With the good point out of the way, the overall image quality of the WH1 frankly qualifies as ‘high definition’ only because of its resolution. The image sensor was practically incapable of capturing the little details that would justify the resolution. In most cases, the image looked like someone had applied some bad watercolor filters to it.

Color reproduction was very phone-cam quality, which is quite sad for a commercial camera like this one. In most cases there was a slight magenta or greenish overlay over the picture, which is typical of the cheap CMOS sensors. There were instances where the image quality flickered terribly in indoor lighting.

In low light the camcorder resorts to higher ISO levels, which is the way it should be, but the greenish noise that came with that was very discouraging. Besides the testing purposes, I preferred to take the camcorder out only in brightly lit areas.

The audio quality however was outstanding. There was clear channel separation in many instances and the WH1 managed to clearly record the voices of everyone present in the location. I would have preferred if it had a way to reduce ambient noise, but I’ll let that pass, as it’s not something I’d expect from this category of camcorders.

Conclusion
When we test camcorders, we test them for all the possible situations where you’d need a camcorder. So while the Xacti WH1 did a great job in underwater videos; as an all-out family camcorder, it left a lot to be desired. For this reason I can recommend it as a second camcorder for those who intend on extensively using it for the one thing it does well - waterproof shooting. But if you’re looking at making a jump to high-definition video recording, this one’s definitely not for you.

Available for Rs. 34,000.