Very good camcorder.
Camcorder is very good. Be ready to spent time in order to be familiar with all features of it. It is not easy for amateurs. But Sony has excellent technical support which uses tall free number. Very weak software. Probably Sony thinks you will buy additional software or use some free software which already exists in your computer.

Sony HDR-SR11
This HD video camera got excellent picture quality at full HD, even at night mode. In super night mode it will lag, but it did pretty good anyway. There where almost no light at all, just a moon and a porch light about 100 feet away.
The only complaint with this camera and the reason for only 4 stars, is when I tried to tape the Nascar race I went to (Brickyard), the camera would shut down while recording.
I'm guessing the sound from the cars going by max out the camera with motion and sound.

Other than this, I like this camera and it would get 5 stars.

Great quality camcorder
I was shopping around at other places, but after reading reviews about the businesses offering this camcorder, most of the cheaper places seemed to be scams or places that earn their money pressuring you to buy accessories, etc.

The picture quality is phenomenal, even indoors and in low light. There is some graininess at the edges, but subjects always look great. The built-in mic records in 5.1 surround, and while I haven't really tried to listen to each channel it does pick up a surprising amount.

All ports are protected by hard plastic covers that slide or flip open, as opposed to rubber stoppers, which at least gives a sense of a better build quality than most. Some ado has been made of the control dial, which is the metal knob located just below the lens, it's visible in the product picture; it's OK, but can only be assigned one function at a time, either focus, white balance, or exposure, and if you want to change the function, you have to go through several presses of the touchscreen.

The touchscreen itself is fairly responsive and accurate, and logically laid out. There's also a dedicated, hardware "easy" button if you don't want to fuss with it and just point/shoot.

AVCHD as a format seems to be getting more universally accepted as a video format to edit; I have an aging Pentium 4 3GHz and playback can be a slight issue, it's not terribly smooth or watchable. I'd recommend getting a mini HDMI cable, the camcorder only comes with a SD plug with RCA outs and the picture quality is terrible in comparison. Included software is the barest barebones, you can transfer video and pictures to your computer, watch/view them, and burn raw footage to DVD in standard definition.

I believe that the measure of a camcorder is the quality of its video, though, and this one shoots 5 star video; most gripes that I have really have to do with the cost of upgrading to HD, like getitng a HDMI cable, HD editing software, parts for my computer so it can edit/playback smoothly, etc., which really aren't the camera's fault. Aside from being able to more efficiently utilize the control dial, I can't think of anything I'd want to improve on this camcorder.

Sony HDR-S11
The camera is capable of generating great images. The onboard mic is typical for this type, limited to about 8 feet. In order to use an auxillary mic, you need and adapter for the Sony Intelligent hotshoe, a good adapter is about . Battery life is shorter than I expected from a camera that uses a hard drive for storage rather than a power-hungry tape transport system, but it will run for almost an hour. Lack of an iLink (firewire) port is an odd choice for Sony, considering you're moving data from an external drive (the camera) to a computer for editing, transfer speed should have been a bigger consideration. All in all, a nice unit, especially since AVCHD is now supported in the major editing applications.

happy customer
This is a great camcorder. Takes awesome digital photos too.

Yes, it's really Full HD. Expensive, but worth every penny.