Good- Very Slim and stylish. It can be easily placed in a pocket or purse Good- Long Battery life Good- Rechargeable Battery Good- Fast Shutter speed Good- very little delay in between shots Good- Face detection Good- Very Easy to use Good- It's a reasonably prices camera for its 12.1 mp quality Satisfactory- A 4x zoom. It works great however with a 12mp camera I would expect at least a 5x Bad- Very little internal memory. You will need to buy a memory stick. Sony's memory sticks tend to be more costly. However a 4gb card holds 838 pics and can be purchased under $35. All and All I think it’s a great choice and I really enjoy mine. Sony tends to last the longest compared to other brands I’ve used.
The camera is easy to use and takes good pictures - internal memory only allows taking three pictures at max pixels. This camera does not use the SD card like others including my cell phone use. We had to make a special memory purchase right away to use the camera. Wasn't the money - just a pain.
After my last vacation hauling around a more substantial camera, I decided it was time to look for something a little more compact. This fits the bill at a most reasonable price ($200 range), yet it packs some very nice features. My semi-shaky hands appreciate the image stabilization feature. Facial recognition and smile shutter are handy...it's amazing to me that on demo mode, smile shutter can even spot a smile broadcast on TV. The 4x zoom is more than adequate for a camera in this class and it's quite compact, easy to slip into a purse. It has a nice large screen area and most operations, with the exceptions of turning it on/off and depressing the shutter, are contained in a compact area to the immediate right of the screen. The camera is easy to use and intuitive enough to be figured out with a minimum of having to refer to the manual. It also shoots video. You really can't go wrong here and if you shop wisely on eBay, it's possible to get it for around $170 like I did. I have only two beefs with this wonderfully economic camera. One is the shutter lag that is unfortunately common to point and shoot cameras. Can't really get around that without investing in an expensive SLR. Two is that the screen is very prone to fingerprints that are not easily removed. These are such minor complaints when you consider what this camera is able to give.Read full review
This is my 2nd Sony Cyber-Shot. My first one lasted for 12 years! I am a realtor and use it for my listings. Because it has a Carl Zeiss lens I get beautiful detailed shots. It also works very well in low light. It is wonderful and compact and has the quality of a much more expensive camera. I am so glad this camera is still available and improved. I am also a professional photographer and know it is not the camera body but the lens that makes the difference. The Carl Zeiss lens is the best in the world and I can't believe this little camera has it!
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
PRO: big 3" LCD, smiles detection, easy to use CON: battery life, poor picture quality I got this one not too long ago because my old camera had quit working after about 3 years and more than 10,000 keeper pictures. I choose Sony based on past experience with them as they made long lasting, quality camera with long life rechargeable batteries. I've had the Cyber-shot line, started with a 1Mpix P30, then went to P70 briefly before I went to a nice P200. Both the P30 and P200 lasted more than 3 years before it started showing problems. Extended warranty? Pshaw these camera outlasts the expensive and useless extended warranties. The P70 I had was only for a year and I sold it to get the P200. I thought Sony would continue with the quality... Unfortunately the W230 I tried failed on some points. First, the zoom button are rather tiny compared to past Cyber-Shots I've had. Second, if you use 8Mpix or 12Mpix resolution for still pictures, there are obvious sign of focus issue. It looks like a classic barrel distortion. This is on auto setting, only the middle area (about 30% of whole picture) looked OK at normal size on computer screen, that left a good portion that looked blurry. This is noticeable from 10 feet and beyond. I did not find any focus issue when using Macro mode on object less than 18 inches away. I've gotten a bit less focus issue on manual setting but it takes time to get the picture perfect and I'd rather not spend 2 or 3 minutes trying to get perfect focus when the cameras is supposed to get it done in a few seconds at most. Also if there are any bright spots, I've noticed there are excessive amount of blue and red fringes around the spots. This kinds of ruin any bright outdoor shots. See http://personalpages.tds.net/~wilykat/w230_problem.jpg for sample picture showing focus issue and red/blue tint. With smaller resolution setting for stills or movie mode, these problem do not show up as there are not much detail in smaller resolution, so the problem are merely hidden at lower resolution. Lastly, the battery seems mediocre compared to the last one I had (P200). The last one I was able to get around 300-400 pictures (about 50% with flash) before the battery runs out. With W230 and its G series battery, I get maybe 50 pictures with 50% flash before I get low battery warning. I have yet to reach 100 constructive pictures (without flash) on one battery. I have already exchanged the camera and battery based on the initial assumption the first W230 I got was faulty but the second one still showed the same poor quality pictures and anemic battery life. A $5 disposable film camera, a $5 film processing, and a cheap $30 scanner can get better looking pictures than this $150 digital camera. If you plan to take lots of outdoor pictures (picnics, traveling, families, sports, etc), skip this camera or use lower resolution.Read full review
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Best Selling in Digital Cameras
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Save on Digital Cameras