Features:
From a design point of view, the HMX20C follows much the same design that many other manufacturers are starting to use for their flash based camcorders. It's essentially a long cylindrical-looking body with a large fold-out widescreen on the left side. With a touchscreen interface just like the HMX10A we previously reviewed, the absence of many buttons is a feature that's quick to notice.

The large lens at the front will certainly be the eyecandy of the HMX20C camera because it's quite a bit larger than the HMX10A's lens. It's a full 1080p 6.4MP High Definition CMOS sensor. At the top of the large plastic ring around the lens is a pop-up flash for when the camera is in photograph mode (in which it is a 4MP still camera). I would have liked to have seen this traditional flash style replaced with an LED flash, this way it could double as a video light too (using a traditional flash as a video light will burn up the internal gases too fast and also create too much heat for the electronics around it). The lens is capable of 10x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom. Using the two together, you can effectively have 100x of digital zoom to get right up close to the action. Luckily it has image stabilization to try and cut down on how shaky the video can get when you use extreme amounts of digital zoom. If you're recording outside, there's also a wind cut feature as well. The lens cover is built in and will automatically close when the camera is either powered off or switched into playback mode. This is handy and saves you having to remember to take off a plastic lens cap and store it somewhere while filming.

The HMX20C captures in H.264 format which you should be able to playback and edit in most popular video editing programs. For those wanting space over quality, you don't have to record in 1080 resolution, you can back it down to 720 if you'd like to make the most of your memory space. You can also choose between normal, fine and super-fine quality settings for each resolution; again, this will help fit even more video on the camera's memory but at the cost of some quality. Both shutter control and focus can be controlled manually. The slow-shutter mode will allow you to capture night-shots by allowing more light into the shutter, so be careful to avoid fast movements when in this mode. Audio is captured in 2-channel stereo AAC format and there is also an option to plug in an external mic (often used to better the quality of the sound you're recording).