Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX20V

Bottom Line

Crammed with the latest features and gadgets, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX20V commands a higher price than other tiny travel-zoom cameras. Photos don't look quite as good as the top-rated Canon PowerShot SX260 HS's (*Est. $230) in some tests, though. Most experts prefer the Canon.

Ease of Use

Pocket-sized and simple. Like other tiny ultra-zooms, the Sony HX20V "fits in your jeans pocket," says Jeff Keller at DPReview.com. It's generally easy to hold, he says, but "there's no room for your fingers when the flash is popped up," and the buttons and dials crowded around the rear LCD screen are "small and cramped."

The 3-inch LCD itself is "beautiful," Keller says, with about twice the resolution of its rivals'. Still, he rates it average for visibility outdoors and in low light.

Manual controls are more limited than the Canon SX260's. You can set exposure, white balance and focus, but the Sony offers only two aperture choices at a time. There's no aperture priority or shutter priority mode.

Beginners get "excellent hand-holding Intelligent Auto modes," says Mark Goldstein at PhotographyBlog.com, plus a handy built-in user guide with on-screen tips. It's a good thing, because Keller says the Sony's owner's manual is online-only, and it's not very detailed or user-friendly.

Performance

Snappy performance, but photo quality isn't the best. "It'll never win awards for its photo quality," DPReview.com's Keller says of the Sony HX20V. Underexposed shots and smeared fine details disappoint both Keller and Paul Nuttall at WhatDigitalCamera.com. Even in bright light, low contrast areas suffer from "a mottled appearance," Keller says, "You'll definitely want to avoid the highest ISOs." Several owners at Amazon.com complain that their low-light photos (and even enlarged bright-light photos) smudge away so much detail that they look like watercolor paintings. "It's a strange effect," one writes. "I look for clarity in my pictures. This camera was definitely not right for that."

However, plenty of owners don't notice anything amiss. Most award it 4 or a perfect 5 stars on Amazon.com. Testers at PhotographyBlog.com and PCMag.com disagree with their colleagues; they say the HX20V does fine even in fairly dim light, up to ISO 800.

"Blazing performance" offsets the HX20V's disappointing image quality in Keller's test. "The camera starts up in 1.4 seconds, which is average, and after that, it's off to the races." Nuttall agrees that autofocus is "lightning quick and accurate," and PCMag.com's Jim Fisher reports, "shutter lag that is very close to zero." Like its main rivals, the HX20V can shoot rapid-fire bursts of 10 full-resolution frames per second (fps).

Video looks good, in full 1080p HD at a smooth 60p frame rate. "The footage is crisp and bright, and the camera can zoom and focus while rolling footage," Fisher says. "The sound of the lens moving in and out is only barely audible on the soundtrack." The HX20V can shoot 13-megapixel still photos while filming (except in 60p mode), but it offers no manual video controls.

Battery life is rated at 320 shots per charge, very good for this class. However, the battery charges in-camera, and it's slow -- nearly three hours, Keller says. He recommends buying Sony's external charger (*Est. $35).

Durability

Partly plastic body seems less sturdy than the all-metal Canon. The Sony HX20V's body is partly metal, partly plastic, says Keller at DPReview.com. He calls it "well built," but he scores it slightly lower for build quality than the top-rated, metal-bodied Canon SX260.

Owners at Amazon.com don't complain of the Sony HX20V breaking or malfunctioning. A few say it feels "solid," but several say it feels cheap -- including five owners who like the camera otherwise, all giving it 4 stars.

"The camera feels ... plastic," one writes. "There are strategically-placed, flat areas and grips for thumb and fingers, but overall it feels like a toy."

Another owner writes, "I guess for a camera of this price I would have expected a body casing which does not appear as a cheap lightweight plastic. ... The casing appears very cheaply made." Another says, "The material is not super-solid so I don't know how many years it can last. One has to pay attention not to damage it as it is somehow fragile."

One owner finds it "more plastic feeling" than his older Panasonic ultra-zoom. Another compares it unfavorably to the Canon SX260. "The Canon has a more solid feel to it. ... The Canon has that expensive camera look and feel, but this Sony does not."

Features

Fully loaded feature set. The Sony HX20V is packed with "several gimmicky-sounding features that are actually useful," says Keller at DPReview.com. Like most of its peers, the Sony offers a 20x optical zoom. You can extend that to 40x using Clear Image Zoom, Sony's feature that is supposed to pixelate photos less than the usual digital zoom. Still, "I'd probably save this feature for smaller prints only," Keller says after testing it. Built-in GPS can geotag your photos with latitude and longitude information. "There's no database of landmarks or maps, but the GPS gets the job done fairly well," Keller says.

Multishot modes abound. With these, the HX20V can shoot two to six photos and combine them to create one shot, with different effects. High Dynamic Range wrings the most possible detail out of highlights and shadows. Anti Motion Blur and Handheld Twilight help you take clearer, less grainy shots in tough conditions. Background Defocus aims to digitally mimic the softly blurred backgrounds that digital SLR (single-lens reflex) cameras can achieve. Backlight Correction HDR -- which keeps your subjects from  looking like black silhouettes when you shoot into glaring light -- makes a "huge difference" in Keller's test. He posts side-by-side shots from inside a glass-walled Starbucks to prove it. "It's definitely one of my favorite features on Sony's high zoom cameras," he writes.

Face Detection lets you program up to eight faces into the camera. When the HX20V "sees" these faces in a shot, it automatically fine-tunes the white balance, exposure and focus with those faces as its top priority. It can also "see" smiles and snap a photo whenever it detects one (you can set it to Big, Normal or Slight). Both features "result in more hits than misses" in Goldstein's test at PhotographyBlog.com.

Sweep Panorama (regular or 3D) lets you sweep the camera across the scene to create an instant panoramic shot. It works well in Keller's test. Like other tiny zooms, the Sony HX20V has no RAW shooting mode or hot shoe. It does have a pop-up flash.