Introduction

Sony knows how to make a great superzoom camera. Last year's model, the Cyber-shot HX100V, has been sitting near the top of our overall point-and-shoot rankings since we reviewed it, and it still holds up nearly a year later.

It's easy to rest on your laurels when you've created something great, so perhaps it's no surprise that the new HX200V is a very safe update. The body is largely unchanged, keeping the same 30x zoom ratio, same lens ring, same electronic viewfinder, and basically the same button layout. Really, the only significant change is the new sensor, bumped up to a massive 18.2 megapixels.

With an impressive roster of new superzooms on the market—many of them boasting longer zoom ranges, brighter lenses, and more control than ever before—can the HX200V compete with relatively few changes aside from its risky pixel-count boost?

The HX200V is available now in black for an MSRP of $479.

(For the uninitiated, superzooms are fixed-lens cameras with very long zoom ranges and big bodies. While they might resemble DSLRs, they nevertheless still have more in common with point-and-shoot cameras than with interchangeable-lens cameras.)