Sony DSC-TX1

Like its predecessors, the TX1, the latest member of Sony's T range of cameras, is an ultra-flat stylish compact with a touchscreen interface. 

It does have one big new feature though--an Exmor R sensor--which, despite having fewer pixels, should produce better quality images.

Handling

The TX1's design provoked a variety of comments here in our lab, perhaps because we were testing the gold version of the camera, which looks more like a make-up case than a digital camera.  It's impeccably built: the sliding lens cover moves perfectly and the battery flap opens easily.  The only real problem is the zoom control beside the shutter release button, which is difficult to control and not much use.  And, while we're on the subject, the lack of a wide-angle lens is also a big shame.


The back of the camera is entirely taken up by a widescreen display in the 5:3 aspect ratio, just a little less narrow than a 16:9 screen.  It measures 3'' but only shows 230 000 pixels, making for a noticeable difference compared to the Panasonic TZ7.  The touchscreen interface works well, although it would have been great to have a multitouch system for zooming into photos.  The screen is bright, but very susceptible to being marked by greasy fingerprints.

The clear menus explain what to do at every stage, but a quick menu with direct access to some key features would have also have been welcome.  Another irritation is that once you've focused on your subject by pressing on the touchscreen, the focus doesn't follow any movement or zoom, unlike on competing models from Canon and Samsung.

Switching the TX1 on is relatively painless, and it's fairly responsive overall, just like other compacts with this type of CMOS sensor.  The new Exmor R is a development of the high-speed sensors Casio and Ricoh began fitting at the start of the year, and is also found on the Sony HX1 bridge.  That means the same extra features that the new sensor is capable of are also available, like producing an automatic panorama by sweeping the camera across a scene.  Overall, the TX1 is a reasonable camera to use, even if there are a few improvements to be made.

Image Quality

With a 4x zoom without any real wide-angle, and not a lot of light coming into the sensor (f/3.5 is the maximum aperture), we'd hope for an excellent lens.  Unfortunately, things aren't all that great, at short focal lengths at least: the centre of the frame is very sharp, but there's room for improvement around the outside.


That's a shame, because behind the lens is a great Exmor R sensor.  At 400 ISO, you really have to look hard to see the first traces of graininess, and although noise is more of a problem at 800 ISO, the overall effect is more grainy than irritating because there aren't many coloured pixels.  Details disappear at 1600 ISO, and it's clear that this sensor can't rival the sensitivity of the Fuji Super CCD EXR sensors, but the improvement on previous generations of Sony cameras is still stunning.

Combined with a powerful image stabilization system and some clever automatic features, the end result is that the TX1 is good at taking photos at night, even though its cousin, the WX1 should in theory be better, because of its more open wide-angle lens.


For video, the TX1 films in 720p HD and uses Mpeg-4 compression, a good choice that makes a decent compromise between quality and file size.  The zoom is still available while recording and remains impressively quiet, and the sound is recorded in stereo, which is great news.  There's still a small disappointment though, as the sound could be better quality, with a light 'whistle' underneath the audio track which both the TZ7 and FZ38 manage to avoid.

In general, it's an excellent compromise between photo and video performance.