Sony buzzes its way to being returned (Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX1)

Member Name: davomrmac

Product:	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX1
Date:	12/10/09 (146 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small, good photo quality, nice features

Disadvantages: Records lens noise when shooting videos

This is a great looking camera... and I anticipated good things. You see Sony had been bragging about their new Exmor R sensor and how it performed so well in low light. It also was going to deliver some cool party features and HD video.

Well, they were right about the Exmor R. It does perform well. The camera has lots of scene modes. One of them is called Twilight mode, where it takes six photos without flash and combines them into one. In my test it worked very well. There is also a neat thing called Sweep Panorama. Normally when you want to take a panoramic photo (you know, the long thin photo of a landscape) you have to take plenty of photos, then put them on your computer, join together and spend time erasing the joins. Well the WX1 you just point at your start point, click, then smoothly pan the camera around. It then joins everything up into a 5 megapixel panorama photo. It worked flawlessly for me and I couldn't see the joins.

Normal photos are equally as good, with a nice 10.2 megapixel resolution. Nice colours and detail. The controls are nice and easy to master too. The battery life is also pretty nice, I got around 320 photos and a couple of videos on one charge... now onto the videos.

Well, this is what lets the side down. The video quality is good, but the 5x optical zoom is not. When recording, you zoom in, but the sound of the lens moving records a buzzing whirring noise on the video footage. This is not acceptable. It is either picking up internal noise or it is down to the position of the microphone (right next to the lens).

This is a shame, as the camera is very cool. It even has face and smile detection that works. Plus an add-on that rotates and pans the camera and automatically takes photos at parties.

My advice, is to only buy if you can put up with flawed video recording.

Summary: My advice, is to only buy if you can put up with flawed video recording

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