Sony DSCWX220/N 18.2 MP Digital Camera with 2.7-Inch LCD (Gold)

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I recently went looking for a compact budget point-and-shoot camera as a gift for my daughters birthday and got to play and evaluate the three cameras that were available at the local BestBuy store on sale for under $200: Canon PowerShot ELPH 350 HS (Black) Canon PowerShot SX610 HS - Wi-Fi Enabled (Black) Sony DSCWX220/B 18.2 MP Digital Camera with 2.7-Inch LCD (Black) My main criteria for evaluating the relative merits of these cameras was the quality of shots made in low-light situations in which point-and-shoots are often used. In my experience with all the previous budget point-and-shoots owned by our family, they all usually do a relatively decent job in bright light outside, but most fail miserably on indoor shots in dimly lit rooms, delivering unacceptably noisy, grainy and blurry images. After bringing home the purchases I waited till the kids were in bed and went on to conduct a decidedly low-tech and unscientific test by setting all three cameras into the P (Program) mode and auto-everything (ISO/shutter speed/aperture/white balance) except the flash, placing them on the desktop in my not too brightly lit home office a couple of feet away from a random sheet of paper with some text printed on it, and firing off two consecutive shots using a 2-second timer (to avoid hand-induced shake), one with the flash and one without. The image showing a side-by-side comparison of the test results using a small fragment of each frame is attached to this review. Both Canons produced virtually identically grainy and noisy images with and without the flash. Sony, on the other hand, fared much better in terms of the visual noise to the point that it’s actually possible to read the text even on the “no flash” image on the right. It also did a somewhat better job auto-adjusting the white balance on the “no flash” image to compensate for the bluish ambient glow of the nearby computer monitor. I observed similarly noticeable differences between the Sony and the two Canons in the video mode, with the former delivering remarkably noise-free and sharp footage compared to the Canons’ crappy picture in which fine details were lost to annoyingly pulsating digital noise. I also noticed that the Sony’s footage was very close to the brightness and overall colour to how my own eyes perceived the room, while the Canons went overboard in an attempt to brighten up the picture at the expense of noise and colour accuracy. Finally, the Sony is capable of recording 60 fps (frames-per-second) progressive full-HD video vs. the Canons’ 30 fps, making it a better choice for shooting fast action footage such as sports, pets, little children and little children playing with pets. Because of my prior experience with Canon point-and-shoots I found the menu structure of the two Canons easier to navigate. The Sony’s menu navigation seemed a little foreign to me at first but overall is logical enough to quickly get used to. Physically, the Sony is similar in size, weight and holding (dis)comfort to Elph 350, the smaller of the two Canons. Even though I have rather thin fingers for a grown-up male, both cameras are way too tiny and smooth to comfortably hold, with nothing for the fingers to securely grip. In comparison, the contoured bulges and small rubbery finger grips of the larger Canon PowerShot SX610 were a really nice touch. The two Canons have very similar controls typical of all the other Canon point-and-shoots. The controls of the smaller Elph 350 are easier to use than those of the Sony DSC-WX220 where one must use one’s nails to press the tiny delicate MENU and DELETE buttons tucked too close to the rotating wheel. This might make the Sony problematic for most adults, but since I am buying a camera for a kid, its small size and tiny controls are an acceptable trade-off for the noticeably better low-light picture. P.S. The full review is published on my blog: https://caspiancanuck.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/point-and-shoot-cameras

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I buy one of these each year for work. I know what you may be thinking...one per year? they must be junk! Not really. I take 100 photos per day in some of the worst places...attics and crawlspaces...it gets dropped in dirt, onto wood porches, off roofs and even in my pocket that gets dirt into it. ...so it takes a real beating over a period of a year....they continue to work, but the buttons start falling off and it becomes unusable. It takes great pictures for the price and wifi download is so simple...takes about 5 minutes to transfer 100 photos. Downside is that the cost of this little unit is getting out of hand. I first started buying them at $120, now they are close to $200.00. Finding the right model is tough...there are just too many cameras with the cybershot name and trying to distinguish b/t each model is difficult.....looked for awhile to find the model that still has wifi that was affordable. Affordable being...a camera under $200 that will only last me a year.

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I bought this camera to replace my previous Sony camera of the same lineage, after the previous camera was dropped on its open lens and would no longer close its lens. I did not buy this camera to use in place of a higher end DSLR, and I do not expect to use it in this manner. I know the camera has limitations, but I also use it for what I believe it is for: A pocket point and shoot camera with higher quality pictures for travel and as a daily, casual camera. For this purpose, I believe this camera takes great pictures. I am still working out some of the features of the camera to adjust pictures taken at night, but I am really happy with the picture quality so far. It has a deeper zoom than my previous camera, so I can actually take closer pictures than my previous Sony camera. I also have no issues regarding the Sony software as I typically take my SD card out and stick it in a card reader. I did test out the wired cable, and while it did install drivers, I actually just accessed my pictures as if it were a USB drive. The camera itself is a little on the gentle side, but I generally keep my camera in a padded leather travel case when not in use, as I have owned higher end cameras and I am well aware of fragility of all cameras and the hardware inside. Updates from the previous model: Most of the features have been combined into the selection dial, which is also a button. The screen is a little bigger. It has a wider zoom. Some of the digital enhancement features offer better stabilization. Regarding some of the issues with night pictures - it seems the camera takes better pictures and uses its own digital aperture sensor to balance the surrounding light in the area to take a better picture. While I havent had a chance to really play with night pictures, I was able to take some decent pictures of buildings with neon signs, and I only had issues with two of my night time pictures. I have uploaded some pictures with this review - the day light pictures were taken through a window. The evening pictures were taken after 10:00 pm, and the lighting involved is neon, sulfur street lights, and other business lighting. Please note I took the pictures to exclusively test the camera out of the box. Alright, having had some more time to fiddle with the camera, they have completely updated the digital apertures into a user friendly picture menu located under the "SCN" menu and a few more night shot options are otherwise in the rest of the aperture menu. I was actually able to take some pretty nice night and low light shots, though this camera is intended to be a simple point-n-shoot. I did not need an additional manual, and the aperture menu was easy to navigate, just push the button in the dial and move the dial up or down to find what one needs to use.

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We got a lemon. We bought the camera the end of January and it stopped powering on at the end of March. We contacted Sony and were told to send to a repair place 900 miles away - at our expense (over $12.00!). We received it back. It worked for 1 picture and then had the exact same problem. I contacted Sony again. They wanted me to send it back to the same place that couldnt fix it to begin with! They kept referring me to another rep who would then call back and repeat the same line - send it back to the repair place. I wanted a new camera, this place obviously didnt know what they were doing and it should not have gone bad after 2 months of limited use. I finally resorted to facebook and was told they would call this afternoon. They did - and gave the same response! What did they not understand?? I have talked to over a half dozen people about this and never got any satisfaction. You would think they would just replace the camera and be done with it. Thankfully, Amazon has offered to accept this return. We will not replace it with a Sony (which has increased $20 since we bought it in January) because the true test of a company is not in the sale but in handling problems. Sony failed big time in that department. Its unfortunate, because it was decent camera the few times it worked...

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I have owned dozens of digital cameras over the years from small compacts models to large DSLRs. I had the predecessor camera to this one from Sony (DSC-W180). It would fit in my pocket when mountain climbing. It served me well on my hiking adventures taking videos and stills. It took great pictures and videos and was very rugged. When it hit a rock too many times and the case broke I had to replace it, so I ordered this camera figuring a newer Sony would perform better. Was I wrong. This camera is terrible. First, the processing time after you take a picture is very long. More than a two seconds. There is no way a camera in 2016 should take so long to process a still picture. It is very annoying. Second. the battery life is very short. Probably half the battery life of my older camera. Third, the flash is terrible. Again, it performs worse than the first generation of digital cameras. It producing strong "Flash in the face" look where peoples faces are over exposed. This is cause by poor feedback circuits in the flash control system. I played with all the flash settings and it never worked well. Finally, in low light the camera is just OK (without a flash). I would have hoped for better with the backside illuminated sensor. I think the designers of this camera tried to jam more pixels into the camera for this model and took a hit on all the other parameters of the camera. I am planning to throw away the camera and get a different one.

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This is an incredible little camera!!! You can take it out of the box, put in the battery and charge it, put in a memory card, sold separately, and start shooting. If you want to do many, many different types of photography the options are all there in the camera. This camera can do everything a much bigger, more cumbersome camera can do. I just slip this in my side pocket and I am always ready to take a picture if I wish and am not having to carry around a large bag of equipment. I also have a Nikon D3400 and a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX400V camera but this little joy of a camera is my favorite now. This camera would be an excellent choice for everyone.

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Compact size and 10x optical zoom seems nice but every time I have taken this camera out I have been super disappointed and resorted to using my cell phone camera. The first critical flaw is the 4-5 second "processing time" after taking a picture before you can take the next one. The next big flaw is the slow and inaccurate auto focus. There is no manual focus or lock-focus-at-infinity setting either. 18.2 MP of blurriness and missed shots is useless.

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This camera was pretty disappointing for our use. I bought this to use at my work after comparing its reviews to similarly priced cameras online. We just wanted something simple that took decent pictures of test setups and products. This camera actually takes pretty good pictures of distant things or places, probably people too, but Ive never tried. It may work better for different applications, but if you want to take close-up images of things, please continue to read this review. There are several issues with the picture quality: 1. Every picture is noisy. Theres just noise everywhere. You cannot zoom in on anything once you put the image on the computer screen, because anything that looked even mildly in focus is not and becomes noisy immediately. Using the cameras zoom on anything closer than 10 feet away causes it to not be able to focus, which brings me to the next issue. 2. This picture is terrible at taking close-up images. I have to take pictures of PCBs sometimes, or metal housing to identify any issues and this just does not like to take close up pictures. It will not focus on anything, and the menus are no help. 3. The menu options and navigation are terrible. For example, there is superior auto, intelligent auto, and program auto for mode selection. I hope you like auto. Not sure which auto is the best auto, they almost automatically do the automatic same thing automatically. I honestly cant imagine a design meeting where someone said "were going to have program auto where they can adjust a few options, but then well have intelligent auto and superior auto, two modes that are so close and ambiguous in naming convention that the user will never know which one is the best choice at any particular time." 4. The port cover over the micro-USB port broke after about 5 uses. It has the smallest plastic tabs imaginable that are supposed to clip in and hold it "closed". Well they broke off, so the whole port cover just sticks out a half inch from the camera and is a minor annoyance unless you want to literally break the whole thing off. I have attached a photo example of trying to take a close up picture. Sadly that is about as clear of a close-up as this is capable of. Notice the noise around everything that is not dead-center in the image, then zoom in and see that its there too and nothing is actually clear. For an 18.2MP camera, I expected to be able to zoom in on a picture and not have it instantly look like Im wearing someone elses prescription glasses.

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Im a bit of a novice so some of you may know how to correct these things. Since the camera is so small, the flash isnt the best. I was worried about the camera being hard to hold with it being so small, but its been fine. Then again I do use the camera strap. I got some spotlighting effects when I take pictures with the flash. If I dont use the flash, especially inside, the color is better but people need to be absolutely still or they get blurred. I do like the HD video quite a bit, but I dont have any HD video to compare it to. Its the first time Ive been able to record at that level. Ive used Picasa to try to download pictures from the camera and that works ok, though Sony seems to suggest their own software. Charging the battery isnt the easiest but is ok. The price was cheaper than some of the other cameras I was considering. I think overall I had better luck with my old panasonic, and will likely look that way next time if it has HD video.

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I was leery of buying another Sony product after my last camera failed, but I had been pleased with it until it stopped doing the autofocus, so I took a chance. The new one came in and it seemed to be okay, until I tried to plug in the charging cable. the charging cable would not fit the port, neither would any of my adapters. So in this case I must assume that all of these cameras will have the same defect. Which makes them absolutely useless and to be avoided at all costs. And for me at least this will also include every Sony product, until they can assure me this is not the case. And if anyone thinks this is too harsh, then deal with Sony or any of their products. One star is much too high

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