If you've been eyeing digital video cameras, waiting for the inevitable price decreases and performance increases, your wait may be over. Over the past year or so, a flood of full-featured digital camcorders has hit the market at under $1,000. By virtue of their higher resolution and greater color bandwidth, these cameras capture better video than their analog VHS and 8mm counterparts, and they're smaller to boot. Plus, they simplify the task of transferring good quality video to your computer, where you can use a video editor to cut your raw footage into—your audience has their fingers crossed—a watchable movie.

The five sub-$1,000 camcorders we've gathered for this feature are far from stripped-down models. All five are remarkably compact, record video on tiny miniDV tapes, and sport desirable features like electronic image stabilization, the ability to record MPEG video for the web, and memory card slots for saving still photos. In this group, stand-out features include the compact size of the Panasonic GR-DVL920, the unusually powerful 22X zoom lens of the Canon ZR50MC, and the 1-megapixel CCD of the JVC GR-DVL920.

What do these camcorders lack? You still need to spend the bigger bucks for truly pocket-sized contours, optical image stabilization, and the highest resolution CCDs. And if you want the broadcast quality video of a 3-CCD camera, plan on shopping in the over-$2,000 neighborhood. But for basic home and travel videos, and even many kinds of business uses, these under-$1,000 machines will do the trick.