Mini Digital Camera
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 is without a doubt, the most stylish mini digital camera. The camera itself is just 0.6 inches thick, the thinnest of any mini digital camera so far.

The camera also comes in brushed metallic colours so typical of Sony, much like its brand lines of Vaio laptops. The DSC-T900 comes in four colours, silver, red, bronze and black.

With its extremely large 3.5 inch LCD screen (which is more than half the size of the camera itself) and 920,000 pixels on the LCD screen, the Sony DSC-T900 boasts of an LCD screen that beats most other mini digital cameras hands down. The large LCD screen is also a touch screen display, which further enhances its sleek image.

While it gets full marks for design and image, the Sony DSC-T900 doesn’t really score as well in the technical department. The DSC-T900 was so focus designed for its sleek and slender profile that many technical specifications were sacrificed in favour for image. For example, the touch screen display means that the LCD had to be big for ease of selecting with your fingers. But the size of the camera means that the LCD is not as big as it should be, making it difficult for some users to try selecting menus with their fingers. There is also no option of using tradition controls; all the controls are now concentrated on the touch screen.

Touch screens can be awkward to use. The response time of the menu is somewhat slow and sometimes the menu is inaccurate when you try to touch the screen. Over time, finger prints clutter on the touch screen, making it a chore in trying to keep the camera LCD screen clean. But to its credit, the Sony DSC-T900 does have one of the best intuitive controls that allows users to adapt easily and convert from tradition controls to a fully touch screen display control.

Another example of sacrificing power for image is the internal zoom lens. To maintain the thin profile of the camera, the zoom lens is made to not extend out so the zoom depth is somewhat limited. Even though the camera has an optical zoom of 4X, the camera produces mixed shooting results at the highest zoom. Some distortion of the image has been reported when taking photos at the maximum zoom.

Most users are fairly disappointed with the image quality of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 not because the image quality is terrible, but more because of the fact that the image quality doesn’t live up to user’s expectations. Given its sleek and classy image, most users have similar expectation with regard to the camera’s technical quality; especially when it costs more than other cameras of the same technical range. But for those looking to live the image, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 is the camera for you.