Sony on Wednesday announced the Bloggie Touch, the company's first pocket HD camcorder to feature a touchscreen. I was given the opportunity to get some hands-on time with the product and the packaging, both of which featured luxurious designs.

The new Bloggie will be offered in silver or black. Its body looks and feels like brushed aluminum, a departure from the glossy and plastic feeling of the older Bloggie MHS-PM5. The Bloggie Touch will ship in a fancy black box that looks like it should contain a piece of jewelry, but the top opens to reveal the camcorder.

The device uses a 3-inch (230K dot) capacitive touch screen. The capacitive screen is key; this is the type of touch screen used on high-end smartphones, so swiping through menus and hitting buttons felt as fluid and responsive as my Motorola Droid. Also like a smartphone, the new Bloggie has a built-in accelerometer so the on-screen menus will change their orientation based on the way you hold the camcorder.

Another feature I loved about the Bloggie Touch was its lens—it offers auto-focus and a macro mode so you can focus on objects as close as four inches away. Most pocket camcorders I've reviewed don't offer auto-focus and many times no macro mode either. Flip's touchscreen camcorder, the Flip SlideHD, is fixed-focus only and there's no macro mode, so objects must be a few feet away from the camera in order for them to be in focus.

Video recordings on the Bloggie can be captured in 1080p (30 frames per second) and 720p (60 and 30 frames per second) while still images can be as large as 12 megapixels. There's a built-in USB plug so you can connect the Bloggie HD to your computer to transfer media and charge the device. An HDMI port is also available so you can plug it directly into your HDTV to playback photos and videos.

Sony Bloggie Touch will feature embedded memory and will be offered in two capacities; 8 G-bytes for $199.99 and 4GB $179.99.