The Panasonic HDC-SD9 is the company’s third generation AVCHD camcorder that records exclusively to SD/SDHC memory cards. The improvements over its ancestor, the HDC-SD1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $1119.99), are numerous. The SD9 records in full 1920 x 1080 with a new maximum bit rate of 17Mbps (up from 13Mbps). The optical image stabilization has been improved, and – for the time being – it’s the world’s smallest 1920 x 1080 camcorder. If it’s a winner, we’re hoping Panasonic grants it a longer life than the six-months-old-and-already-dead HDC-SD5. But the SD9 begs the question, how small is small enough? The reduction in size has clearly begun to hurt handling. Despite this, the SD9 shows advances in image quality long awaited in the AVCHD format. It’s not a perfect camcorder by any means, but the HDC-SD9 is among the best ultra-compacts we’ve seen yet.
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