I'm going to buy a camcorder before this weekend and I've just been looking at the Curry's and Tesco website for a camcorder. The amount of camcorder's available to choose from is quite wide. I've copied and pasted a few camcorder specs to have a look at reviews but it still doesn't really help that much. I don't want an all singing all dancing one. Just need one with a decent optical zoom pref 20x or over, optical image stabaliser and of course good quality output. HD will be a bonus although most of them are HD now anyway, 720p will do me. I was looking in the price range of £150-170. Do anyone on the forums have experience of camcorders or know what the best choice is? As I want the camcorder for the weekend ordering off the internbet is a no go even though it may be the wise option moneywise.
Any advice greatly appreciated.

Try here, might be worth a pound
http://www.which.co.uk/

Wow didn't know you could still buy them?

Go for a Canon, can't go wrong then.

I've had got two Panasonics (NV-DS27B and NV-GS27), so pleased with the first one that when I wanted a more modern smaller one I got another.

Both were bought at rock bottom prices after a lot of hunting and price-matching.

Both have been physically abused and survived amazingly well. One was on a tripod set at about 5 feet high and blew over in the wind landing lens down onto solid rock, bit of plastic flew off but would still clip back on without glue.

Standads do change though, the second one is not as good as the much older one in many respects but I am still pleased with it.

I have a Panasonic myself, and it is very good. And to be well and worthily recommended.

Cheers for the advice, I looked at the which website and the top 30 camcorders were all quite expensive. The camcorders only started to get good percentages after the £230 mark. I will look at the Panasonic and Canon camcorders and decide between those two depending on the specs for my price range.

I often find professional reviews are biased ...

When reviewing a cheap product, they find things to explain why its cheap.

When reviewing a higher priced product, they look for features to justify the high price.

When you read between the lines, its often subjective twaddle

I don't think I'd opt for a camcorder with a joystick control again, its just annoying, I'd stick to buttons - but that's my subjectiveness