As you've been able to see up until now, we've managed to test quite a few products from Canon, but as far as camcorders are concerned, we've only gotten our hands on standard-definition (SD) models, which, despite providing some pretty OK overall features, can't really be compared to a device being able to record Full HD, 1080p videos, for later enjoyment on a widescreen HDTV.

And, in fact, this is exactly the type of product we got to test, namely Canon's own Legria HF M36 flash camcorder, which was officially introduced back in early 2010 and arrived on the market a couple of months later.

After spending a fairly extensive amount of time with the two SD Canon camcorders, we weren't really expecting too much out of the HF M36, at least in terms of controls and connectivity options (not that there was any particularly wrong with either the FS22 or the FS307, but they're a bit under the level of the Panasonic TM300, for example). Much to our surprise, Canon's HD camcorder provided an extensive set of video recording features, impressive video recording capabilities, a plethora of connectivity options, as well as numerous other cool features we'll explain along the way, as we explore this thing's functionality.

Additionally, the Legria HF M36 was the first Canon camcorder we tested to come equipped with a touchscreen display, which, by all accounts, was quite an impressive experience. In fact, Canon sure took their sweet time before implementing this feature into their HD camcorders (both Panasonic and Sony rolled out touchscreen-equipped cameras a lot earlier), but the result is quite well worth it, the level of control and responsiveness being very good. Plus, the same goes for the software implementation of this new control system, the whole GUI being seriously improved, as you'll be able to see later on within our review.