Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T900

Viewfinder

We're not sure where Sony would have put a viewfinder on the T900, even if they wanted to.

LCD

The Sony Cyber-shot T900's signature features is the huge 3.5 inch touch-screen LCD display that takes up the entire back of the camera. The touch screen is used to make all your adjustments, thus obviating the need for a dedicated 4-way control. In addition to being large the display is also high resolution, packing in 921,600 pixels.

The touch-screen display is the signature feature of the T900

Although beautiful to look at the key test here is how well the touch-screen functions for controlling the camera. We have not been impressed by Sony's touch-screen implementation in the past. Thankfully the T900 seems to represent a significant step forward. We did not notice any of the inaccuracies, missed presses and lag that we've seen in the past. Although a touch-screen still isn't our favorite method of camera control it does have its pluses, for example on the T900 you have all that screen real estate to show off your photos. And the fact that it isn't as annoying to use makes us much more willing to tolerate it.

Flash

The T900's flash is located almost directly to the left of the lens on the front of the camera. All that sits between it and the lens is the auto-focus assist lamp. We wish that Sony had found some way to move the flash to the opposite side of the camera, as it is you can bet that you'll get red-eye problems with the T900. According to Sony the T900's flash is good out to 9.5 feet in auto mode.

The flash is probably too close to the lens.

Lens

The Sony Cyber-shot T900's lens sports a 4x optical zoom with a focal range of 35-140mm (35mm equivalent) along with Carl-Zeiss landing. Obviously packing in any kind of optical zoom in a camera this small is going to require some compromises to pack all the elements into the available space. When we reviewed the T700 we saw this show up in our low light testing. Chances are that this will also be an Achilles heel with the T900, although we'll have to wait until we get it into our labs to confirm this. Especially considering the maximum aperture on the lens is a mediocre f/3.5.

The tiny lens stays flush with the camera body.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

The only port found on the Sony Cyber-shot T900 is on the bottom of the camera, directly to the right of the cover for the battery and memory card. As is typical for Sony you have a proprietary connector that does double duty for both A/V out and data transfer. The T900 is also supposed to ship with a stand that includes various connections, including an HDMI out, unfortunately we weren't able to see this.

Proprietary connections are not our favorite thing.

Battery

As you'd expect the T900 has a very small battery that sits under a cover on the bottom of the camera, right next to the memory card slot. Sony rates the battery for 200 shots, which means that you might want to keep a spare battery and/or charger handy if you expect to take a lot of shots.

The battery sits right next to the memory card slot.

Memory

The Sony Cyber-shot T900 supports Memory Stick Duo Pro memory cards, up to a capacity of 16GB. Although not quite as ubiquitous as SD/SDHC cards, its not difficult to find Memory Stick Duo and the price difference is minimal.