By: leixiao (24-Jul-08)      Experience with product: 3 Days

Strengths:	light weight, powerful optical zoom
Weaknesses:	The battery charger could not charge battery at the same time when being used as DC converter for the camcorder.

Full User Summary
Overall I like this Panasonic SDR-H40 hard drive camcorder very much. It is light weight with powerful optical zoom function (42X). Very easy to set up and operate. The price is not very high when considering its multiple unique features.

By: Newmanny (15-Mar-08)      Experience with product: 10 Days

Strengths:	42x Optical/2000x digital zoom, 40G HDD, light weight, easy data transfer and burning to DVD, simple menu, zoom mic, wind mic filter, and relatively low cost.
Weaknesses:	not much, joystick is a little awkward for big hands

Full User Summary
I've owned the Panasonic SDR-H40 for over a week and it's been everything advertised. I decided on a SD model for now because of the much lower cost compared to HD models and the fact that not many of our friends/relatives have HD/blu ray DVD players. This model provides the features which matters the most to us: high memory, light weight, good resolution, easy of use, easy of transfer, a media (std DVD)that's widely used, and a very competitve price. I highly recommend.

By: docfreeze (08-Mar-08)      Experience with product: 4 Days

Strengths:	Small form factor & lightweight - easier my wife to hold, big HDD (~9hrs of video at highest quality - manf.), records to SD/SDHC cards, no touchscreen, zoom mic, manual controls.
Weaknesses:	Lacks optical viewfinder, Panny's US software/support web site for H40 lacking, uses MPEG2 video (wished for MPEG4), bottom load SD slot, no LED light, manf's ext. warranty exp$$$!

Full User Summary
I've only owned this camcamorder for a couple of days, but I'm liking it a lot! This camcorder is meant for my wife and I to use for our vacation/family videos, as well as for our business trips (to record conferences and Q&A sessions). It's a nice size, being small enough for my wife to swing it around without me struggling to get to the controls (my hands are much larger). Having a zoom mic is essential for our business use, although low-light recording at standard quality is rather grainy, higher quality settings improves it a little (my guess is that this is probably more of a MPEG2's weakness, rather than the weakness of the camcorder's lens/capture). I'm glad Panny decided not to go with a touchscreen LCD - I'd hate having to clean the smudges off the screen after prolonged use - esp since there's no optical viewfinder. I really wished they offered an LED light in front (or even an accessory shoe to add on) - I almost went for a JVC HDD recorder because of that. Oh and btw, Panny's extended warranty is ~$220 for 3 years... wow... compared to Sony's, that is quite expensive IMHO!One thing I can't comment on yet is the video editing part of it. The camera produces .MOD files, and at Standard Quality - it records with NTSC MPEG2 704x408 (4:3) 9510Kbps video, with Dolby AC3 48KHz @ 256KBps audio. I will see if I can add more to this once my wife returns from her upcoming business trip.