The good: Stylish design; slim body; packed with useful functions like Hand-held Twilight and Sweep Panorama modes; quick performance.

The bad: Average picture quality with noise showing at ISO 200; inconsistent white balance.

The bottom line: The TX1's slim body and design will appeal to the fashion-conscious crowd, but some users may not like the photo quality.

Read full review of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX1 »

By Leonard Goh, CNET Asia
Nov 23, 2009

Sony's Cyber-shot T series cameras are well-known for their stylish design and slimness. But that doesn't mean these good-looking snappers just sit pretty. The latest addition to this family of shooters, the TX1, goes to show how powerful a petite camera can be. Although this point-and-shoot lacks a wide-angle lens, it makes up by having an improved sensor which delivers decent night shots. Add to that plenty of features to appeal to both beginners and enthusiast shutterbugs.

Design

The TX1 is a real looker. The sleek, glossy front cover, though prone to fingerprints, complements the matte finish at the bottom of the camera. A nice touch to the snapper are the tapered ends which accentuate the stylish outlook.

Since this Cyber-shot is a touchscreen-operated shooter, there are minimal buttons on it. There's only the power, shutter and playback buttons with a tiny zoom lever at the side. Despite the miniaturization of the buttons, it isn't hard to press them.

The 3-inch touchscreen takes up most of the rear estate. To prevent users from covering the display when holding the TX1, the company has installed a nifty thumbrest on the right side, which doubles as a handle for the carrying strap.

A minor gripe we have with the Sony is the battery/memory card slots. They are recessed too far into the snapper's body, which makes taking the juice pack and media out difficult. The cover also feels a tad flimsy, unlike the rest of the camera's build which is more solid.

If you've used a Cyber-shot before, the TX1's operation won't daunt you. Menu navigation remains similar to other T-series cameras, with commonly used options available along the sides of the screen. Sony has included a stylus to tap the LCD with, but we find using our fingertips does the job pretty well, too.

Features

The TX1 employs Sony's new Exmor R sensor which made its debut in the HX1 earlier this year. According to the firm, this sensor is twice as sensitive to light as the ones used in its older Cyber-shots, and can also deliver better night shots. There are two other nifty functions--Hand-held Twilight and Anti Motion Blur-which will capture several consecutive shots of the same scene and piece them together to generate a sharp picture. Interestingly, the Hand-held Twilight mode works similar to Fujifilm FinePix F70EXR's Pro Lowlight mode. We'll take a look later to see how these two snappers stack up against one another.

Here's a comparison table between the TX1 and other similar point-and-shoots.

Specifications/model	Canon Digital Ixus 200 IS	Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX1	Nikon Coolpix S70
Sensor resolution	12 megapixels	10.2 megapixels	12 megapixels
Dimension/weight	99.9 x 53.4 x 22.9mm/130g	93.8 x 58.2 x 16.5mm/119g	96.5 x 60.5 x 20mm/140g
LCD size	3.5-inch	3-inch	3.5-inch
Zoom/focal length	5x/24-120mm	4x/35-140mm	5x/28-140mm
Max. video resolution	1,280 x 720 pixels	1,280 x 720 pixels	640 x 480 pixels
Image stabilizer	Optical (via lens)	Optical (via lens)	Optical (via lens)
Memory media	SD/SDHC	Memory Stick Pro Duo	SD/SDHC
Related links	Review		Overview

There is also a Sweep Panorama function which is really useful for capturing landscape shots. This compensates for the lack of a wide-angle lens, though the shot's resolution is at a reduced 5.3 megapixels. We found this implementation really easy to use as we just had to hold down the shutter and move the camera, while the TX1 took the shots and stitched them seamlessly together. Users can also adjust the orientation, whether they would like to capture the scene from left to right, up or down.

Sony also announced the Party-shot with the TX1. This attachment has a 360-degree swivel base and can tilt 24 degrees. When attached to this module, the camera will turn around and use the face and smile detection function to hunt for human subjects and automatically take pictures of them. Check out our video to see how it works.

Performance

The TX1's performance is respectable. The startup time of 1.5 second may be ho-hum, but the shutter lag with and without prefocusing measured just 0.1 and 0.4 second, respectively. Time-to-first-shot clocked a quick 2.2 seconds.

Focusing speed was snappy in our tests, and it helped that we were able to tap the screen to perform selective focus on our subjects, especially if they were off-center.

With regard to exposure, the Cyber-shot handled most scenes well. But like most point-and-shoots, there were tendencies to over- or underexpose scenes of high contrast. This is where Fujifilm has the upper hand with its High Dynamic Range mode which captures the same scene with different exposure settings and combines them to show more details.

As with most other Cyber-shots, the TX1 has face detection and Smile Shutter, too. Both functions worked well, though Smile Shutter tended to snap the shot when it detected just one smile in a group photo where other subjects were not ready. For this, we advise users to press the shutter button themselves instead.

Battery life for the Sony was good, too. We snapped over 150 shots and expanded only half the cell's power.

Image Quality

We pitted the TX1's Hand-held Twilight mode against Fujifilm's Pro Lowlight setting. As you can see from the shot below, the picture from the F70EXR showed more details but the edges of the subjects looked jagged. On the other hand, the Cyber-shot exhibited smoother tones but couldn't capture as many details as the FinePix. We call this a tie, and it's really up to the users' preference which one they like better.

On its own, the TX1's picture quality is somewhat middling. As with other compacts, it performed well at its lowest ISO sensitivity of ISO 125. However, noise started to creep into the shots from ISO 200, and images taken at ISO 400 had few details. We noticed the shooter behaved differently once we ramped up the ISO setting to 800. Photos captured at this setting looked sharper than the ones taken at ISO 400 (despite us using a tripod and the camera's self-timer function for the test to prevent blur pictures caused by hand shakes). But once we set the Sony to ISO 1,600 and above, the pictures looked spotty and had few details.

The automatic white balance feature didn't work well in our test unit, either. Shots that were taken under fluorescent lighting had a yellowish tinge to it so we advise users to manually set the white balance if they are taking shots under mixed lighting conditions.

Conclusion

With its slim body and stylish looks, the TX1 is set to captivate the hearts of the trendy set. Its fast performance and effective face detection and Smile Shutter make this shooter suitable for families, too. However, fussy shutterbugs may not be content with the mediocre picture quality that this Cyber-shot delivers, especially when it is employing the new Exmor R sensor.

Tags: Shot, Cyber-shot, Sony Corp., Camera, touch screen

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