Sony Cyber-shot WX1

Sweep Panorama Mode

Just like Sony's HX1 bridge camera, the WX1 makes use of one of the new features of the CMOS Exmor R sensor to take panoramic photos in a single shot, either horizontally or vertically.

The secret? The WX1 takes a series of photos as you move the camera, before it then works out how to stitch them together to create the panorama. It's so simple anybody can use it, and the results are pretty incredible.

UPDATE 19 October 2010: the overall score of the Sony WX1 has been brought down to four stars. In line with our newly tightened test criteria, the lack of SD card support and poor screen definition cost the WX1 its fifth star.

Along with the TX1, the WX1 is the second of Sony's compact cameras to feature the manufacturer's new CMOS Exmor R sensor, which offers much greater sensitivity at low light levels.  It doesn't stop there though, as the WX1 has several interesting features, including a 5x zoom on its 28 mm wide-angle lens and a 720p video mode.

Handling

The WX1 looks pretty good: to go with the new, smaller sensor, Sony has produced a new design for the case.  It's well finished and the compact is heavy enough to feel solid.  The buttons feel robust and the different elements of the zoom lens slot together snugly.  Overall, the hardware inspires plenty of confidence.

The different buttons used for controlling the camera are quite small, although most of them are easy to use.  Personally, I still prefer a ring around the shutter release to control the zoom and a larger power button.  Instead, there's a small slider which doesn't give perfect control over the zoom and a power switch which just pokes out of the surface.  A tiny button right next to the shutter release launches the burst mode, one of the WX1's real strong points.

Indoors, the LCD screen is nice enough to use, with a good fluid display, and wide viewing angles, even though it does dip to black when you look at it from below.  In low light levels, it begins to lack fluidity, but maintains detail.  In sunlight, by contrast, things become more difficult, with light easily bouncing off the greasy fingerprints that it's easy to cover the screen with.  A screen with a higher resolution would also have been welcome for a compact like this.

Following the trend in the world of photography, the WX1 couldn't do without an automatic scene recognition system.  It's pretty accurate, although not very responsive.  Elsewhere, there are Easy and P modes that allow you to modify a few settings yourself, including DRO.  Behind these three letters hides the powerful Dynamic Range Optimiser feature.  It evens out photos by making darker areas appear lighter to pick out extra detail, at the cost of a small fall in contrast.

The connectivity offered by the WX1 is a little stingy, with just a single output for AV video and USB.  There's no HDMI output on the camera itself--for that, you'll need the optional dock, the VMC-MCHC1, which is somewhat disappointing given that the WX1 films in 720p HD.

The WX1 is easily amongst the average for compacts when it comes to responsiveness.  Switching it on is fast, and the autofocus works well in good light conditions, even when zoomed in; when lights level fall, an extra LED helps it along.  The time you need to wait between saving two photos is entirely acceptable, and the burst mode reaches 10 frames per second over ten shots.  Afterwards, though, you do need to wait around 15 seconds for the camera to process all ten photos.  Overall, using the WX1 is a very enjoyable experience.

Image Quality

The new WX1 has a G lens, which is no longer provided by Carl Zeiss.  The lens offers an attractive formula, with an aspheric element and a portion in ED glass to limit chromatic aberrations.  The range of focal lengths available, from 24-120 mm, is almost perfect, and can address the majority of your needs.  Some people might be disappointed by the macro mode which stops at 5 cm, because other cameras do better in this area.  Another important point is that the wide-angle lens lets in quite a lot of light: f/2.4.  The aperture reduces gradually as the zoom moves out, to finish at f/5.9 at 120 mm, which is actually not very high.  The centre of the frame is very sharp with an excellent result, but the same can't be said for the edges, despite the aspheric lens.

The 'small' Exmor R sensor lives up to its promises, and its handling of electronic noise easily trumps the competition, and only the Fujifilm FinePix F200EXR can do better in SR mode.  Graininess is only visible from 800 ISO, and even then the grain isn't too colorful and most of the details are still there.  That leaves us wishing there was a bigger sensor ... why not a 1/1.6'' like on the F200EXR?

The video is perfectly standard 720p: the optical zoom is available during filming, and the continual autofocus is fast in wide-angle mode but struggles with telephoto mode while the sound is only available in mono.  With a framerate of 9 Mbps, the quality is reasonable, but nothing more (the AVCHD codec in theory supports bitrates of up to 24 Mbps).  It's easy to see the compression when you play the video back on a 1080p TV.