You certainly won't miss the Sanyo VPC-WH1! It is a bright canary yellow with black highlights on it. But this gaudiness is for very good reason seeing as this specific Xacti model is designed for more than just taking hi-def video (albeit at 1280 x 720 not the full hi-def spec). You see it is also fully waterproof to 3 metres with proper grown up rubber seals and locks covering all the sensitive bits.

Sanyo cunningly market it as a "duo camera" meaning it can also take stills - which really is no big deal as the majority of camcorders can. However, sadly this is no megapixel behemoth as at its best, these stills are only 2 megapixel - hardly worth crowing about.

The layout of the VPC-WH1 is pretty conventional with transport controls on the back,  zoom rocker and on/off on top, a duplicate record button on the right side toward the front and the cubby hole for the USB and HDMU ports and SD card slot under the flip out LCD and behind a waterproof sealed and locked flap.

The first time you try and open this is frustrating; it is very small and by its nature you tend to put a bit of downward pressure on it and this automatically makes the lock and seal grasp tighter! Trust me, it is a two handed affair to get this open.

And get it open you will have to, as the VPC-WH1 only comes with 43Mb of RAM which is a sneeze in hi-def terms. The slot will take SD cards up to 32GB.

At $749 for the market it is aimed, it is a great little camcorder, but no substitute for a real hi-def one and a decent megapixel still camera for land based use if that is more your thing.

By David Hague