Sony Cyber-shot WX150 Digital Camera Review

Handling

The WX150 has a typical entry-level point-and-shoot profile. It's less than an inch thick, with no grip or true thumb-rest (though the shooting-mode toggle helps). It's slippery and feels small. But it's also incredibly light, so one-handed shooting is not a problem. There's enough room for two-handed shooting as well. Stabilization is effective, so holding it steady isn't an issue. All told, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about handling—if you've shot with a point-and-shoot anytime in the last five years, this will feel familiar.

The advantage of the compact size is, of course, portability. It isn't the smallest camera we've seen (that honor goes to the Sony TX66), but it's slim enough to fit comfortably into any pocket. It's still bigger than a smartphone, but it does have the advantage of a 10x zoom lens.

Display(s)

No surprise, the WX150 doesn't have a viewfinder, but it does have a serviceable 3-inch, 460,000-pixel LCD. The specs are about what we expect at this price. By default, it's not quite bright enough to see in direct sunlight, but the brightness is adjustable, and at the maximum setting, it cuts through the sun. The display has a very slight lag, but it doesn't impact the shooting experience.

Image Stabilization

The WX150 includes SteadyShot optical image stabilization, but it can't be deactivated, so we couldn't run our comparative sharpness test. Anecdotally, the stabilization is effective enough to steady full-telephoto shots and indoor photos, though we ended up with a number of shaky low-light photos.