Canon Legria HF M406 review

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The M-series is broader than its Panasonic competitor, with a more pronounced hump along the top and a totally flat side beneath the grip like Nikon D5000 Battery Grip, Sony VG-B50AM Battery Grip, Sony Battery Grip, Canon BG-E5 Battery Grip, Canon Battery Grip, Pentax Battery Grip, Pentax BP-K7 Battery Grip
Pentax K10D Battery Grip, Sony VG-B30AM Battery Grip, Canon BG-E10 Battery Grip, Canon BG-E2 Battery Grip, Canon BG-E8 Battery Grip, Canon BG-E7 Battery Grip; we found all this made it more comfortable to hold for long periods. The HDC-SD800's supplied battery protrudes slightly from the rear of the camcorder, and a larger one would stick out far more. The M-series on the other hand has a huge battery recess, which the supplied two hour and 13 minute battery only half fills, so you could add a far larger replacement, lasting nearly seven hours, without it impeding your use of the camcorder.

The lens has a 10x optical zoom range, with a 35mm camera equivalence of 43.6-436mm. It's a decent range, though we prefer the noticeably wider 35-420mm range of the HDC-SD800, which only sacrifices a little at the telephoto end. The M-series use a single 1/3in CMOS with 2.3-megapixels, a very different proposition from its Panasonic competitor from with its 3-chip array of smaller sensors with higher pixel counts. We're yet to see Sony's camcorders for this year.

Test footage showed accurate colours and well-balanced exposures, motion is smoothly captured too. However, it lacked the fine detail and sharp edges that we've become accustomed to on Panasonic's new models. The larger sensor makes it superior in a wide range of conditions to the cheaper Panasonic HDC-SD90, with its single 1/4.1in sensor. There was barely any noise in our low-light test and the frame rate stayed smooth, but that can also be said of the SD800. It seems that the benefits of the sensor in low-light, an advantage born of its relatively low pixel count, then count against it in brighter conditions. Here camcorders can make use of pixels above-and-beyond the two million needed to form a Full HD image, and use them to generate sharper and more detail-packed video. You can see this in the 100% frame grabs below, and in our office plant shots in the gallery.

The M-series camcorders all have optical image stabilisation, unlike the cheaper R-series with its electronic system. In our labs test, using a vibrating table, it did excellently, and there was barely any motion in the final footage, with the same slight shimmer of movement we saw on the HDC-SD800.

At just over £500, the Canon Legria HF M406 is a little cheaper than Panasonic's three-chip HDC-SD800. It has some useful features, such as the accessory shoe, big battery recess and dual-card slots, but unless any of these are essential to you then the SD800 wins out for its superior image quality in good lighting conditions. The M-series is superior in less ideal conditions to the HDC-SD90, but then at over a hundred pounds more, it should be. This leaves the M406 (and its more expensive brethren) stuck between a rock and a hard place; only those who are desperate to add an external mic, but who can't stretch to £680 for Panasonic's HDC-SD900 (review coming soon), should buy an M-series.