If you want quality, get something that uses MiniDV tapes. Anything that records to HDD or flash memory records in mpg or something similar, which is lower quality media and is not editing friendly (I have edited with mpg video, no fun). MiniDV media captures onto the computer as DV-AVI which is the highest quality digital media and can easily be edited and reduced to a lower quality. Your choice. A majority of prosumer video cameras still use MiniDV format for the quality aspect.