[ Music ]
>> Hi, I'm Will Greenwald, assistant editor at cnet.com
and this is the Sony Cyber-shot DSC T 200 digital
camera. This 8-megapixel shooter is Sony's follow up to
the T 100 which I reviewed a few months ago and as you
might recall was a really good camera. The photos
looked amazing, it was nice and stylish, a lot similar
to this, and it shot fast. Now unfortunately the T 200
doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. It has a
couple issues that just make it not nearly as polished a
camera. For starters it replaces the interface with a
touch screen, but in all fairness as a touch screen this
is actually a pretty useful interface. I've dealt with
a lot of touch screen-based digital cameras. Oftentimes
the menus were clunky, the buttons were unresponsive,
and it was just very hard to navigate. But Sony's
interface for the T 200 is actually quite intuitive.
You just tap the different functions, they pop out, and
there's plenty room to work with on the 3-inch LCD
screen. Now unfortunately because it puts all the space
for the screen there's not enough room for the zoom
rocker which is relegated to this tiny little nub on the
top of the camera. Now, it does shoot quite fast, about
as fast as the T 100, and that's really nice.
Unfortunately the images are not nearly as good. Photos
taken on the T 200 look softer, they lose a bit of
detail compared to the superlative images on the T 100
-- and that's unfortunate. By no means does this
camera take bad photos or is it a bad camera, but it's
definitely not quite as good as its little brother.
Like several of Sony's new DSC T series cameras this
[Inaudible] a unique feature called smile shutter, and
then whenever it detects a face that smiles it just
snaps a photo. Kind of a quirky little feature but it's
pretty interesting to use when you're taking portraits.
You can do a lot worse than the T 200, but if you can
find the T 100 -- it's the same thing but with much
better photos, no touch screen, a nicer zoom rocker, and
just generally better built. I'm Will Greenwald, and
this is the Sony ^M00:02:02 [music]
