I bought a handy cam after lot of research as it was goign tobe my first one and as I didnot intend to look for a change in next 2-3 years I wanted to be sure I buy the right one and gett total value for money. I review lot of handycams, sony, jvc, national and samsung.
I found sony was a good handy cam small and compact, but it was very expensive. I found samsung handycam to be equally good a slightly bigger in size but about 20 -25% cheaper (if my memory is not wrong). It support multiple memory card devices, had a good bundled software editing , web streaming, special effect, playback to tv etc.
However I must admint that there are some draw backs like the battery life is very short when we use the lcd screen (appx 20 -30 mins recording). it lasts a little longer when we are on the viewfinder mode. the nigtmode needs a little more improvement and so does the image stabilisation . Also I found that the lense cover is a seprate entity unliek in sony wher is it a part of the handycam. Since lense cover is seperate there is every possiblity of loosing it.
However my overall expreince with the product has be good