Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W270 review

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W270 has an exceedingly neat trick up its sleeve.

Switch it to Smile Detection mode and point it at someone. Get them to flash a smile, and it instantly takes a picture. It's not something you'll find yourself using constantly, but it works astonishingly well.

Sony, unfortunately, preserves its unhappy reputation for annoying proprietary formats: the DSC-W270 works only with Memory Stick Pro Duos, which, gigabyte-for-gigabyte, are more expensive than SD cards. It also uses an unwieldy USB cable that doubles as an AV-out cable for connecting to a TV's composite connection. Lose the cable and there's no chance of using either a cheap micro- or mini-USB connector instead.

We also found our review sample's shutter release had a very indistinct action - there was virtually no détente between the half-press to focus and the full-press to fire the shutter, which made precise timing difficult. The same goes for the buttons on the back, which are also less than positive.

It only finished in the middle of the pack for quality. It did well when faced with a reasonably close-up subject - our still life shots lacked a little lustre, but were otherwise good. You can shoot at ISOs up to 1600, although shots at ISOs higher than 800 lacked detail.

Unfortunately, we had equal cause to complain about the lack of detail when we took the DSC-W270 out for a day's shooting. Shots of trees turned to muddy green well before we'd zoomed 100% into the image. Any shot from our testing would have been unmistakably digital once printed. The lens is less than spectacular as well, topping out at 140mm when zoomed all the way in.

At this price, the DSC-W270's main competition is from the Samsung WB500 (above), and the Samsung camera offers some impressive extra features. You get full-on manual modes, for instance, plus manual focusing and a larger screen, to say nothing of that large 10x zoom. The DSC-W270 is a decent enough camera, but it needs to be a bit cheaper before we can overlook its foibles.