Sony W270 - a stylish compact camera with 28mm wide angle lens and 720p HD movie mode. Should the W270 be the HD compact to find itself onto your wishlist? The What Digital Camera Sony Cyber-shot W270 review investigates...
Sony Cyber-shot W270 Review
Image Quality & Value For Money
Sony W270 review – Image Quality
The Sony W270 becomes somewhat undone with its image quality. The usual ‘small sensor, masses of megapixels’ trait is at work here – with so many megapixels in such a small sensor area it becomes hard for enough light to ‘cleanly’ render an image. The result is that the W270’s images are particularly noisy at higher ISO sensitivities, often showing a ‘smeary’ lack of detail too. At lower ISO settings there’s still a presence of noise – more than many competitors – though this actually looks more akin to film-like noise than anything else.
In the real world, and despite the 12.1 megapixels provided, the W270 isn’t the ideal compact for making enlargements to your images. Of course, it’s more likely than not that snaps of friends and days out will only make their way as far as the internet or small prints. This being the case the quality is more than fine, if anything the 12MP count becomes overkill – dropping down to 8 or 5MP will allow hundreds more images to fit on an average-capacity Memory Stick Duo.
The W270 tackles low lighting fairly well however, as the image quality doesn’t particularly deteriorate beyond that of a standard daylight shot. Whilst there are some notable jpeg artifacts, the colour balance, wide dynamic range and metering makes for decent images from shadow to highlights. A lot of compact cameras struggle to focus, display proper blacks or a realistic dynamic range – but the W270, despite its already limited image quality, performed well here.
Sony W270 review – Value For Money
Many would consider Sony a premium brand that carries ‘premium prices’. Often that can mean looking to buy a product at considerable expense. Not so much the case with the W270, as the RRP of £230 can be slashed to abound £200 after some shopping around – it’s a fair price for a compact, not least a Sony compact.
The W270 also comes in four colours, with the red an example of a well-finished camera that’s a successful merger of style and function. Line the W270 up against some of the more brick-like compacts on the market and it looks clean and stylishly edgy.