The Sony HDR-XR200 is the entry-level model in the company’s new star line-up of GPS-equipped handycams. In addition to built-in GPS and geo-tagging, it has all the trimmings you’d expect from a flagship Sony camcorder, including (deep breath) Full HD (1920x1080) recording, a 120GB hard drive, a 15x optical zoom lens, a Memory Stick slot for additional storage, 5.1-channel surround sound, an LCD touch screen, a 4-megapixel still image mode and optical image stabilisation. It also comes with more manual options than you can shake a clapperboard at, along with plenty of consumer-friendly features. In terms of performance, it’s on par with last year’s excellent Sony HDR-SR10, which offered similar specifications.

The Sony HDR-XR200 can be viewed as a replacement model for the HDR-SR10, which explains their marked similarity. Both models share the same 1/5in ClearVid CMOS sensor and effective pixel count of 1490k. What separates this AVCHD camcorder from its predecessor is the afore-mentioned GPS functionality, along with an additional 80GB of memory (the new hard drive will net you around 15 hours of video at the highest quality setting, compared to 4.8 hours with the Sony HDR-SR10)

Some pre-existing features have also been refined by Sony, including smile shutter, face detection and optical image stabilisation. To be honest, we never had any issues with the previous iteration of this technology, so any purported improvements are difficult to gauge. While the Sony HDR-XR200 might not represent a revolutionary step forward, it’s unquestionably a better product than the HDR-SR10 — which was pretty darn good to begin with. Our only reservations have to do with the asking price and the lack of external audio, which we'll get to in a moment.