Dear friend, before you plan to buy a Sony TRV 33E just hold your self.
I planned to buy a Sony TRV 22E a month back and realized the series has been discontinued by Sony. I confirmed this calling couple of Sony World-s, talking to few people in the grey market, who deals with camcorders and even checking their https://sony.com global site. They had only TRV22E on their website !!
For product details available in India though, https://sony.com.sg (Sony, Singapore site) and https://sony.co.in are more relevant, though the Indian site takes a bit of a time to update itself with the latest range of products. Though slightly off topic, be careful when you check features of products at https://sony.com. Do not always expect the same features to be available in India. Some products will have exact model numbers (except the E added for ’’European’’ I guess) but will be available in Asia (and hence India) having slightly different features. Don’t think the features provided here will be not up to the mark compared to US - product features are customized as per per regional requirements and consumer demands and needs.
If you have done a lot of research and decided to buy a Sony TRV33E do not loose heart. A few pieces are still available in the grey market (avg grey market cost is Rs.32, 000). And now that you are feeling a bit relaxed that it might be available :-) let me tell a little about TRV33E and the series which might be of help.
I needed to buy a camcorder which would give me:
Good, better than most I mean :-), low light performance. (Very few camcorders give real good lowlight performance)
Have a good steady shot to minimize the effect of camera shake.
Comapct in size
Close to natural representation of colours.
Note: To choose your camera of choice you first need to analyse your needs and then compare on the features (and reviews) of the camcorders. The same feature might exist in couple of camcorders but the performance of the features might vary (and there the reviews become important). The budget becomes foremost in your choice - the more you spend the better will be the results, hopefully always I guess :-)
I shortlisted Sony TRV 22E as the one of my choice, TRV 33E being a close second. Let me not talk about rest of the products as they would be irrelevant to this review. Now who does what better:
TRV33E has definitely better still resolution than TRV22E. A big plus if you want to use your camcorder as a low end digital camera also. The stills are good enough to publish on websites or make prints of 3’’x 4’’ (do not expect great results in print)
TRV22E has better low light capability than TRV33E - that is because TRV22E has a slightly larger CCD size than TRV33E.
Both have equally good steady shot to minimize result of shake.
The 10x/120x zoom is adequate if you do not plan to do wildlife or bird photography.
The small size makes it easy for carrying.
Touch panel makes things easy (though in outdoor with a strong sun you might have problems viewing it).
Microphone is decent and does not record its own motor noise.
Battery life is ok - depending on how more you use the viewfinder compared to the LCD screen.
Luckily before buying the camcorder I could test my hands on my friends’ cams :-) But when I wanted to buy it, there was the shocking news of the series being discontinued :-(.....all researches gone to waste ??....not really. With all I had known about Sony’s camcorder products, I landed up buying DCR HC-40E (grey market cost of Rs.35, 000/-) two weeks back....and till now I would say its better than the TRV22E and TRV33E...can write about HC-40e if you are interested, though I need to fiddle around with it for about a week more to see if I am not happy with anything. So far so good.....
After seeing Sony’s HC40E I would recommend this product over TRV 33E.