The DCR-SR40 is the last model in the new Sony hard drive line and this one has a 30GB hard drive and is the cheapest when compared to the other two models. The DCR-SR40 has a battery life of six hours and sports a 2.5-inch (4:3 ratio) LCD monitor with touch panel functionality. This one too like its counterparts sports the Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, however unlike them, the SR40 is capable of an 20x optical zoom.

The DCR-SR40 can record up to 20 hours of footage in long play mode and more than seven hours in high quality mode and also sports the famous HDD Smart Protection system. As you may know b y now, that the protection system includes physical shock absorbers, G-sensorâ„¢ shock protection and video stream buffering to prevent data loss. This one too comes with a Handycam Station which lets one easily connect to a computer, television set or DVDirectâ„¢ DVD recorder via the included USB, AV and DC-in cables. Like all its siblings the camcorder comes with DVD authoring software which lets you edit the downloaded content.

The Handycam Station also sports the One Touch DVD Burn button which automatically burns video to a DVD via a PC and flawlessly works with the new VRD-MC3 and VRD-VC30 DVDirect recorder models. The DCR-SR40 will be available in September for about $600.