The typical vacation video is painful to watch. When we visit friends and family who have recently returned from a trip and they ask if we want to watch their vacation videos our minds usually turn quickly towards concocting an excuse — A just-remembered appointment? A gas stove at home accidentally left on? A sudden bout of whooping cough?. That is, unless their video was taken with a GoPro video camera.

There are two key differences between a GoPro and, say, the video recording app on your iPhone:

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For skiers and snowboarders looking to take first person videos of their runs on the slopes, there are several excellent hands free action cams you can attach onto a helmet.

And there are a few ski goggles with a built-in video camera made a consumer electronics company, Liquid Image.

But never before has a specialist eyewear manufacturer incorporated high-end video capture into a high-end pair of goggles. At least not until Zeal Optics did it with their iON.

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RIP, Flip camcorder. Today your parent company, Cisco, announced it is will be ceasing your production.

Cisco’s announcement puzzles Spot Cool Stuff at bit. Flip was a trusted brand with strong sales—at the time of writing its products ranked 3rd, 7th, 8th and 10th on Amazon’s list of top selling camcorders. Perhaps with camcorders being incorporated into an increasing variety of products—netbooks, tablets, smartphones, ultra-compact cameras, and so on—Cisco felt the Flip couldn’t keep up.

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How do you go about designing the world’s first consumer 3D camcorder? The answer doesn’t require an engineering degree: You start with an excellent 2D camcorder.

That’s exactly what Panasonic did. It took its superb HDC-TM700 camcorder as a base model and then integrated extra dimensional recording capability. The result: the Panasonic HDC-SDT750K, the world’s first consumer 3D camcorder.

So how well does the final product work? And should you consider jumping on the 3D camcorder bandwagon? Our pros, cons and verdict:

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Consumer digital camcorders never seem to take video that looks as good as that you see on commercial HDTV programs—until now. Sanyo’s Xacti HD1010 is the world’s consumer camera that shoots in 1080i. The video recording, done at 60 frames per second in 1920 x 1080 high definition, is truly superb!

This camcorder includes image stabilization, which Spot Cool Stuff found to be only marginally useful. What worked brilliantly for us is the 300 fps slow motion. Even better was the Sanyo’s low light recording capabilities thanks to the nimble f/1.8-2.5 lens and the face detection feature that adjusts brightness and focus for up to 12 people at a time.

This camcorder is light—only 11 ounces (310g)—and small enough to fit in a pant pocket, making the Sanyo Xacti DC1010 practical to use for your still camera as well.

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