When I was looking to purchase the Sony CX440 was the major competitor that I considered. The Sony offers 50 MBPS bit rate (against 35 MBPS) as well as built-in memory, but the R600 has the better zoom and I am not convinced the built in memory is worth having. At 35 MBPS the Canon can take great 1080p video at 60 frames per second in MP4 format and that was what I needed.

Since the Canon VIXIA HF R600 doesn't have any internal memory, you have to buy an SD card. I actually view this as a good thing because I could pick one that suited me. I went with a speedy Class 10 64 GB SDXC memory card and so far it has performed flawlessly.

The Canon HF R600 houses the same 3.28-megapixel Full HD CMOS (1080/60p) sensor and DIGIC DV 4 processor as the HF R60 and HF R62 so if you don't need Wi-Fi the Canon VIXIA HF R600 offers a better price-to-performance ratio.

Video quality is pretty good even under low light conditions, certainly way better than the camera I was using.

Compared to the model that is replaces (the Canon R500) I could not find any significant difference in the specifications. The only minor improvement is slightly improved battery life at 120 minutes. If you already have an R500 or can buy an R500 cheaper then the older model would be worth considering.

The newer Canon VIXIA HF R700 offers some very minor improvements but performance wise it is also a viable option with some good prices available now that it has been replaced with the R800.

I've been using it for several weeks now and all-in-all I am very happy with my choice.