Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V

Bottom Line

Owners praise the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V. It's a customer favorite at both Amazon.com and BestBuy.com, crammed with extras (like 3D and GPS) and a whopping 30x zoom. The average user will be satisfied, experts predict.

But enthusiasts should look elsewhere. The HX200V can't shoot RAW files, lacks a hot shoe and photos -- although they look fine at smaller sizes -- suffer from purple fringing and slurred detail. You can do better, experts say: namely, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200 (*Est. $600) .

Ease of Use

Lots of manual controls, but no real owner's manual. Bulkier and heavier than most ultra-zooms, the Sony HX200V looks like a small digital single-lens reflex (SLR) camera. Don't expect to carry it in a pocket. But all that real estate does make it easy to hold and control, thanks to a hefty handgrip and plenty of DLSR-like buttons and dials to work the full manual controls. A lens ring makes zooming and focusing intuitive, reviews say.

If you'd rather not mess with the controls, two "Intelligent Auto" modes let you use sliders to fine-tune your photos' color tone, saturation and brightness, "all without knowing any technical terms," says Jeff Keller at DPReview.com. Beginners beware, though: There's no real owner's manual.  You get a thin, basic paper manual, but otherwise, you have to search Sony's website for answers. This irritates some owners at Amazon.com and Keller, too.

Like the top-rated Panasonic FZ200, the Sony gets both a tilt-and-flip LCD screen and an electronic viewfinder. The viewfinder isn't great, though: "Small, low resolution," Keller says. "Grainy and coarse," says Dan Havlik at Imaging-Resource.com. There's an eye sensor, but it takes too long to switch the viewfinder on in Havlik's test. "Frustrating ... caused me to miss a couple of good shots."

Performance

Photos look good "as long as you don't look too closely." "If image quality is your top priority, consider another superzoom," one testing agency says of the Sony HX200V.

Sony packed 18 megapixels onto the HX200V's small sensor, but it doesn't help image quality in tests. "Photo quality is pretty good, as long as you don't look too closely," writes Keller at DPReview.com. Purple fringing and smeared details pollute the HX200V's photos -- but only if you blow them up really big. Keller and Gavin Stoker at PhotographyBlog.com both agree that a user making prints smaller than 11 inches by 14 inches probably won't notice these flaws.

Owner reviews back this up. The HX200V earns high praise at both Amazon.com and BestBuy.com. Still, several Amazon.com users complain about another problem: sluggish autofocus. They report blurry photos or missed shots. "As a birdwatcher, quick focusing is essential," one writes. "By the time it focused, the bird was sometimes gone." Shutter lag and shot-to-shot delays drag it down in other expert tests, and the HX200V's 10 frames-per-second burst mode (more specifically, the long lockup afterward) frustrates Havlik at Imaging-Resource.com. Havlik and Stoker both discover that the camera takes a relatively tardy 2 seconds to power up, "not fun if you're in a hurry," Havlik says.

Video mode is missing one major feature -- manual controls -- but it's loaded in other ways. For example, it can record full 1080p HD video at 60 frames per second (60p). "Only a handful of cameras can do that, and what you get is smooth, non-interlaced video that looks great," Keller says. You can record for 29 minutes straight, zoom while you're shooting (although the mic will pick up the zoom noise) and snap 13-megapixel stills while recording (but not in 60p mode).

Battery life is rated at 450 shots per charge. "If you've got the GPS off, the HX200V should make it through a day of shooting with plenty of room to spare," Keller says. The battery charges in-camera, though, which some users find inconvenient.

Durability

Plastic body feels mostly solid. The Sony HX200V is "made mostly of plastic," says Keller at DPReview.com. That's not as tough as a metal body, but still, "the build and finish here is of high quality," PhotographyBlog.com's Stoker says. Keller largely agrees: "Construction is solid, though the mode dial and door over the battery/memory card slot feel a bit cheap."

Most owners report no durability problems. One Amazon.com customer -- a pro photographer who usually shoots with more expensive cameras -- complains that the Sony just "'feels' cheap ... like it will break if you drop it."

A few owners wish the HX200V came with a lens hood, or at least threads to add one. "There's no way to protect its precious lens from scratches, impact, or rain" while in use, one writes. Another doesn't want to use an aftermarket push-on hood, fearing it will drag down the end of the plastic lens barrel over time and eventually distort photos.

Features

Tons of tech features, but missing a few basics. Two important advanced features are missing from the Sony HX200V: It can't shoot RAW files, and there's no hot shoe.

Otherwise, "the HX200V has nearly every bell and whistle ever created," says Keller at DPReview.com. The 30x lens out-zooms its 24x rivals, and you can boost that to 60x with digital zoom (although that degrades image quality).

The camera comes with a slew of high-tech features. Some you'll find elsewhere (like handheld twilight mode), but Sony just does them so well, reviews say. For example, "The camera's HDR, Anti Motion Blur, and Handheld Twilight features all combine multiple exposures into a single photo" that's more contrast-rich, sharper or clearer, respectively, Keller says. "The whole thing works so seamlessly that you can hardly tell that the camera just took a series of photos and mashed them all together."

And while just about every new camera can stitch together a sweep panorama these days, Sony can do a 360-degree one -- in either 2D or 3D. "Believe it or not, the HX200V also has a built-in GPS receiver," Keller says. "Although it's no-frills (lacking maps and landmark databases), it gets the job done, as long as you stay out of the big city."