Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900

Handling (6.00)

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900 is small, light and incredibly easy to hold. It’s very slim, at only 0.66 inches (16.3mm) deep, and so will easily fit in just about any pocket. It has a slight flare on the right side, which makes it easier to hold, as you can easily grasp that and the thumb-pad/wristlet loop on the rear. However, as good as the physical body is for taking with you just about anywhere, the interface is a bit of a pain. The touch-screen system is less responsive than we’d like, which can make navigating menus and changing options clunky and slow. The icons are all much lower resolution than the T900 screen could handle, which makes them look unattractive. The camera has a highly reflective surface, and both the the screen and body of the camera become smeared with fingerprints in almost no time.

Buttons & Dials (8.00)

Being a touch-screen camera, there isn’t much in the way of buttons and dials on the T900. The zoom, shutter and toggle between still and video modes are all situated around one small circle of controls. The power button and playback buttons are both to the left of this, and are identical in size and shape. On more than one occasion this has led to us pressing one when we meant to press the other, and some sort of differentiation would have been appreciated.

Menus (4.00)

The Sony T900’s menu is an odd combination of very simple and slightly confusing. Most of the important shooting settings are changed by pressing the Menu button, but the full menu system is accessed by pressing the Home icon. Many of the features that show up in the former are also available in the latter. Since the camera is touch-screen based and the LCD is a large 3.5-inch model, all the icons are large, so they’re big enough to hit with fingers. Changing one settings can make others vanish too, without any explanation. For instance, if you select a focus point by tapping somewhere on the screen, all the focus and metering options disappear until you cancel the focus point. Or if you have the flash turned on, all the white balance options except Flash and Auto disappear, without explanation, until the flash is turned off. A much better system would have them grayed out, with an explanatory error that popped up when you tried to click on them, rather than just vanishing.

Shooting Menu - Holds most of the frequently altered settings, like stabilization, burst mode and white balance.	Home Menu - An overarching menu which gives you access to other options, in addition to the ones in the shooting menu.

Manual & Learning (1.50)

The manual is poorly laid out, and skimps on many necessary details. For instance, even though the camera offers bracketing for shooting, at no point in the manual is this ever explained. While it does adequately describe how to use most of the menu options, an explanation of what these options actually accomplish is often neglected. One nice touch on the camera itself, is the option to pop up an explanation of every setting when you push its button, which at least fills in some of the blanks left by the cursory manual.