Sanyo has unveiled its Xacti VPC-CS1 camcorder at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and once again the company is touting the small size of its gear, lauding the VPC-CS1 as the “world’s smallest, lightest, and thinnest full HD” camera—by which they mean a consumer camcorder with an optical zoom lens capable of capturing 1080p video. Regardless of Sanyo’s claims, the VPC-CS1 truly is pretty thin, measuring just over 1-inch at its thickest—and there’s where the lenses are housed. The rest of the camera is even thinner.
The VPC-CS1 can capture 1,920 by 1,080 video as well as 8 megapixel still images—Sanyo loves to call this a “dual camera”— and saves video in MPEG-3 AVC/H.264 format, which makes them friendly with Windows Media player and other media apps built into Windows 7—the camera is also being certified for iFrame compatibility, which would make it a little more Mac-friendly. The camera also features digital image stabilization and a “face chase” function for shooting video that helps keep subject’s faces in focus and well-exposed. The VPC-CS1 features a mini-HDMI port for pushing video and images to a big screen, and stores video to SDXC memory cards.
The Xacti VPC-CS1 also has three microphones and a “sound zoom” feature that enables users to narrow the audio recording field focus to exclude some sound to the far left and right of the camera, potentially enabling users to better capture audio from the camera’s subjects.
The Xactli VPC-CS1 should be available in February 2010 in silver at a suggested price of $299.99.
