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Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290

in Digital cameras

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290

Verdict

A great-value Cyber-shot combining decent features and good image quality with a reasonable price

Review Date: 11 Nov 2009

Price when reviewed: £153 (£176 inc VAT)

Buy it now for: £149.99

Overall Rating
5 stars out of 6

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
5 stars out of 6

Performance
5 stars out of 6

Image Quality
5 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

There are few digital compacts on the market that offer better value than the Sony W290. Chunkier than the super-svelte Canon Ixus compacts or Nikon's S640, it’s nonetheless perfectly pocketable at 96 x 27 x 57mm (WDH), and the build quality is solid indeed. The larger body also allows for a 3in screen on the back as well as a conventional four-way control pad alongside.

As a result, it’s a very easy-to-use camera: no-one who picks up this camera will be foxed by the controls. The Carl Zeiss lens sports a true 28mm wide-angle setting, which is good to see in a camera at this price. There’s a decent 5x zoom range too.

The W series has been Sony’s best-value camera range for several years now. It used to be hamstrung a little by rechargeable AA batteries, but these days you get a proper rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack. In fact, the only feature it’s lacking is optical image stabilisation.

The pixel rating of modern cameras is all but irrelevant, but the W290 has the requisite astronomical 12.1 megapixels: enough to print your shots on the side of a bus if you so wished and still barely see any jaggies.

And, if you’re feeling confident enough to take the camera off fully automatic mode, you get a reasonable amount of manual control in Program mode, letting you choose metering mode (including spot metering), exposure compensation and focus area.

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290

At the other end of the scale, in fully automatic mode you get facial recognition and smile detection. These are nothing new in the latest cameras, but the W290 has something that makes the best use of them: next to the normal shutter button is a dedicated smile-shutter button, which means the feature might actually get used rather than languish unseen in the menus forever.

Press it and the camera automatically takes the shot when it detects your subject is grinning. We found it works almost every time, as long as the smile in question is directly facing you.

Downsides include the fact that Sony continues to cling doggedly to the Memory Stick format, although prices are closer to SD memory than they used to be. There’s also a totally proprietary cable and connector that combines USB and video connections in one unwieldy bundle.

It isn’t a spectacular tour de force, but the W290 gives a good zoom range, wide-angle lens, lovely big screen and good quality for well below £200 inc VAT. And for those reasons it's a very good buy.

Author: David Fearon

User comments

Bum. That's smaller than my palm.

I'm looking for a compact camera but one my yeti hands could have a chance of holding without pressing every button going.

Every camera I've tried in Jessops - except the DSLRs is just too small, especially if I want to use it ringside when wearing handwraps.

By bubbles16 on 12 Nov 2009

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Latest Prices for Cyber-shot DSC-W290

Seller Price Buy Now Seller Rating
UK Digital Cameras £149.99 Shop 5 starts out of 5
88 reviews
Oyyy.co.uk £158.60 Shop 5 starts out of 5
544 reviews
Jessops £199.00 Shop 0 starts out of 5
2 reviews
Compare reviews: Digital cameras

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