Rating:

Pros:

The 14.1 MP takes very crisp and clear shots. The camera is quite thin, and slides right into a front or back jeans pocket (although I am sure you should be careful when doing this). They come in a variety of nice colors. The menus are simple to navigate. The battery life is above the average of my last few digital cameras. There are some cool options for the focus types. There is a beach focus that really makes the blues in the water pop. It works nicely for shots with a lot of blue open sky behind them as well. It picks up great detail, and is easy to use. With the right focus selected, it even does quiet well in low light conditions. I am very, very happy with the photos that I have taken with this camera.

Cons:

These little cameras are very proprietary. They do not use standard SD cards, so there is no quick camera to camera swapping of pics with friends that have different cameras. There is also no popping the card out and just plugging into your flat screen or into the computer at mom’s house to do a quick view. They only use N type lithium rechargeable, so if you run out of batteries at the beach, there is no running into the gas station to grab spares. The USB port is even a nonstandard size. If you aren’t careful where you put it, you will come home from vacation excited to see your new pics, only to be tearing the house apart looking for the specific cable. The on screen crop is also a bit complicated to figure out.

Wrap Up:

If you are responsible with the mini USB cable, do not mind carrying it with you when you may want to share pictures, and plan ahead where batteries and chargers are concerned, this is an awesome little camera. The quality of photos makes up for the inconveniences of not having more standard parts.

Rating:

The quality of the photos was amazing, and it was a really easy-to-use camera. I didn’t really read the instructions, but i figured it out anyway! The screen is nice and big, and doesn’t get dirty easily. If it does, the camera comes in this little paper thing that can be used to clean the LCD.

One thing is that if you don’t like noisy cameras, watch out for this one because it makes a sound every time you push a button. Personally, I think it’s really cool but that’s just my opinion. You may be able to mute the sound, but I’m not sure yet.

The only problems I have with this camera is that first of all, I can’t get open the A/V out plug thing, so that may be a problem for me. =) Another thing is that for the zoom, Amazon makes it sound like it’s amazing because it’s 4x OPTICAL zoom. However, it has no DIGITAL zoom, in other words, you can’t zoom on the actual screen before you take a picture. It’s still good, though.

The color is really nice; a little darker than the picture but it’s pretty. I really like the different features this camera has, like being able to crop the images on the camera.

The video mode is great, because you can hear the sound when you’re playing it on the camera- my old one didn’t do that. The only problem with the video is that you can’t zoom in/out while taking a video, and you have to make sure it’s at the right place before you start taping.

Anyway, this is an awesome camera and takes absolutely beautiful pictures. It’s really light and can easily fit into one’s pocket. I would definitely recommend it!

Rating:

Francisco Giordano

Rating:

The only bad thing about his cam is that you cannot zoom in and out when you are recording a video, and there is no option to turn on the flash during recording. In addition, the videos that you record is clear when you recored something close but not far away. It records images that are far away a bit blurry.

As far as the battery, it doesn’t last that long and the charge time takes a little while. i would recommend buying a spare battery.

Over-all it is a great camera to have.

Rating:

Update: After chatting with Sony’s product support they told me to “initialize” (click on menu then scroll down until you see the briefcase icon, then click on it and after scrolling down some more you will see “initialize”), its like re-formatting the camera back to factory specs. Initialized my camera and now the mic sounds better, not as sensitive as before. Video recording in a moving vehicle is still distorted but not as much. Just lower the volume of your video player. I surrender and reality has sunk in. Now I give it a 4 from 3 stars and am gonna try to look for another small video camera for HD videos.

Rating:

SPEED: Since I am an electrical engineer, it did not long to discover that all of the intelligent smile, red eye and other detection algorithms were taking a lot of processing time slowing down the camera. After turning them all off the seed improved a lot. Next I put in a 4GB Sandisk Class 6 SD memory card and that helped some more. In fact the speed to take still shots was about the same as my old Canon. However, when using the flash it does take about 2-3 seconds to recharge and be ready for taking the next photo, but I can live with that. The camera automatically uses the flash outside more than I like, so I turned it off and it the camera operated faster. All of the intelligent detection algorithms really slow down the camera. With all of them shut off the camera is ready to take a picture in about 1-2 seconds depending on the resolution of the picture your taking. That is about 1 second for a 5M versus 2 seconds for 14.1M of resolution. That is just the time it takes to write the image to the SD card. If you get the class 10 SD cards I am guessing it will be closer to 1 second to write the image to memory.

BATTERY LIFE: There are different modes you can set the camera to operate that control the amount of current used to operate. Because of all of the bad reviews, I set it to the “Stamina” mode as I was going to be away from power sources to recharge the battery and was planning to take lot of pictures. On a trip to Chevelon Canyon to take pictures of Petroglyphs I used it continuously for 3 hours and took 291 5M resolution pictures. I turned it on and off about 50 times that day and after doing this for about 3.5 hours and 291 images later, the battery showed 2 of the 4 bars of still available battery life. I turned it on the next day and took another 100 images and there was still one bar of battery life available. I did not use the flash for any of these pictures. Using it the way I did, would allow taking 400-500 5M resolution pictures which is more than I got with my Canon.

BATTERY CHARGING: My canon took about 30 -45 minutes to charge, but I now think it used a higher current than the Sony and so it gives a quicker, but not as deep of a charge. It was shocking to learn the Sony took about 3 hours to charge. It must be a low current slow charge method which usually makes batteries last longer and hold their charge better.

PICTURE QUALITY: I am not a professional, but people have told me I take good pictures. With that in mind I could not see distortion around the edges and corners as I read in other reviews. Maybe some or one of the auto detection algorithms does compensation that messes up the images? With the camera setup in a minimal auto mode as described above, the pictures I have take are of the same quality as those I took with my SD870–VERY GOOD!

WIDE ANGLE LENS: It does not have the digital zoom lens feature the SD 870 does and it is fantastic compared to the fixed zoom of the W370, and the wide angle is not as wide, but if you move closer or further back a few feet it gets the job done. When your truing to take a picture of a cliff dwelling located on a ledge that is difficult to get closer to, digital zoom is missed.

PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE: It comes with a reduced function NERO photo editor. They only allow certain functions to get you to buy the package. NERO will not even allow a person to delete a photo from their computer unless they buy the upgrade. Well you can go to where your photos are stored and delete them yourself or just use a good inexpensive photo editor and forget using NERO. I tested the results of the NERO editor against the FREE editing capability in PICASA (free by Google online) and I could not see any difference. I just transfer the images and then use an editor to do the croping, etc.

CONSTRUCTION: I checked out a couple of the canon model for a similar price and they weighted about half as much as the W370 and did not feel like they were built very solidly. This camera is as sturdy as my old SD870. While taking pictures the first day I had to jump from rock to rock over a flowing creek and when I landed on the far side the camera went flying and landed on a large flat & smooth boulder and slide about 6 feet before stopping. I cringed as I picked up the camera hoping at least the pictures were good, since it was such a remote place. After trying the camera it worked fine and I have not found any negative issues with it since. It is a rugged well built camera.

REVIEWERS: I think reviewers often do not read the manual and therefore do not set things up correctly, work for the competition or work for the manufacturer and so there can be a lot of dis-information to sift through. The middle ground reviewers are probably most accurate (LOL)?

OVERALL: This camera is solidly built, has a large 3″ diagonal viewer that is easy to read, takes good pictures and a lot of them with one battery when the auto detection features are turned off. It is just what I need and a good value in my opinion for the price. Now, if I had to buy a camera again and had two weeks to get it, know what I now know, I would buy it again.

Rating:

Cons:

-short battery life

-not much memory (I highly suggest you buy a memory card together with this)

-hard to detect smiles

-sounds of camera while zooming is recorded during video mode

Rating:

Well I was wrong.

The camera itself is impressive as all of the above is true, however, it’s seriously lacking in the most important thing. Picture Quality. I used the camera for a couple weeks at a few social events where lighting wasnt perfect (translation = indoors). I guess the problem is that this camera is geared towards being easy to use, “intelligent auto focus”. Well it’s not that intelligent. I constantly found myself having to try to trick the camera and adjusting all the settings possible. But the truth is that who has that kind of time when you’re in the moment? Remember the old saying “A Kodak Moment”? Well it’s more like a frustrated moment. It also took a while to write to my memory card (Sony ProDuo) in a couple shooting modes. For certain scenarios with good lighting or up close where the flash can do it’s work you should be fine. But now a days I expect a lot more from a camera. Especially in this price range. The video noise mentioned in other reviews is true. I didnt notice any battery problems as mentioned in other reviews.

To be fair, here is The Good: The panorama feature is absolutely awesome. It does a good job of lining up the different shots as you pan from one side to the other. The screen is just awesome, everyone commented on how nice that was. It is an easy camera to use as there arent much in the form of controls or options to control. And it does have a high zoom but I find it less of a strong point when the exposure lacks a clear bright picture. Being able to zoom in and out during video shooting is a plus (but a slight minus when you hear the noise during playback). HDMI out is a huge plus for viewing vid’s and pics since many more people have Flatscreens now days. I purchased my HDMI mini to HDMI cable on Ebay for about $5.

So I decided to return it and foot the shipping costs. I then researched like crazy and visited BestBuy and Frys at least 4 or 5 times and found that sadly, there werent any cameras that really made me feel that much better about returning my W370. Most of the comparable cameras at least in regards to the features of the W370, cost $300+. They all seem to have flaws. So instead I decided to make the jump to the “Advanced Point and Shoot” category. They’re not as sleek or pocket friendly but you really do get your money’s worth when it comes to picture quality and options. In case anyone cares, I went with the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35 12.1MP Digital Camera with 18x POWER Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7 inch LCD and I’m extremely pleased with it so far.

If you need that one camera to last you a couple years, this is probably not the right one. If you happen to have money to spend on a slick looking camera that will perform well enough at least some of the time, some of the features here make it worth at least that. Hope that makes sense.

Rating:

Some problems with the W7 were autofocus that didn’t focus properly (especially in indoor, low-light conditions), redeye was pervasive (even with the redeye reduction feature turned on), and shutter lag time. (One feature I liked about the W7 was the inclusion of an optical viewfinder, which it seems most of the manufacturers have now abandoned on these small digital cameras.)

Most of these problems seem to be addressed with the newest (2010) generation of Sony DSC point-and-shoots. I decided this was the time to replace the W7, and it came down to a choice between a DSC-W330 and DSC-W370. After taking some test photos in the store, and sending those photos to my personal computer at home for analysis, I decided to purchase the W370.

The W370 does not have an optical viewfinder, but it has everything else, and does everything right. The low-light, indoor shooting that the W7 could not handle is not an issue at all for the W370. Each indoor shot has been clear and well-focused, with exquisite background detail in shot after shot. In 10 test shots, only 1 came out bad, whereas with previous Sonys there might be 4 good shots and 6 bad.

The quality is light years ahead of the W330. I was attracted initially to the W330 because of its sleek look and small form factor (the W370 does not have this sex appeal), but the W370 blew the 330 out of the water in terms of photo quality, especially autofocus (always sharp) and redeye reduction (no redeye or hint of redeye at all in shot after shot).

In sum, I purchased the W370 and haven’t looked back. This is an excellent little camera and everything a digital camera should be. Takes excellent photos whether indoors or out, natural light or artificial, bright conditions or low, etc. I highly recommend this product.