Yesterday I got the opertunity to fiddle with the EX1R on the Sony Roadshow in Stockholm.

Here are some quick observations:

SDHC-cards with the MxR adapter work! Both in HD and SD and also using cache record. It keeps writing on the card forever after stopping the recording however.

The SxS-card slot door is very flimsy compared to the EX1. It seems very easy to break and does not look as good either. This was a disappointment.

Also - the base of the camera has a new finish. It is now in a polished black plastic. Someone remarked that it looked like a cheap chinese taxi. I don't like it at all.

The new viewfinder also looks very good! It is now on par with the LCD.

To sum it up - the camera seems to fulfill it's promises on the new features but I am frankly disappointed at the new look and the flimsy card slot door.

Yes I noticed the horrible plasticy looking base on the new EX1-R at the Sony event in London today- it looked really odd but was, thankfully, the only cosmetic disappointment in an otherwise excellent upgrade, to my mind. I really liked the new switch arrangements (S&Q, proper buttons on top instead of the membrane ones, orange backing to switches etc.). The new viewfinder is excellent - and we all know what the old one was like. The new SxS slot door did not seem over fragile to me (compared to the very poor, fragile door on my EX3 anyway) but I did not look too closely at that.

The mate I was with (who has an original EX1) thought that the EX1-R was slightly lighter than his original in weight too (although the ones we handled were devoid of batteries so it's difficult to judge). Maybe this is a result of that plastic base??

Is the base you are describing something apart from the beefed up bottom plate I've read about?

The EX1R's on the roadshow events are pre-production units. The door is as it will be on the final models, but I am not sure that the shiny black plastic base is what will be on the production cameras. The pre-production EX1's had that same shiny black base which did not appear on the production models.