Sony's various point-and-shoot cameras generally have three things in common: They have exquisite product design, take pictures of excellent quality, and are overpriced. The 8.1-megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100 is no exception. That it possesses the first two qualities I mentioned nearly made it an Editors' Choice winner, but the steep price ($399.99 direct) knocks it out of contention.

Only Canon really comes close to Sony at making digital cameras with alluring designs. The DSC-T100 has a very attractive brushed-metal surface and is available in silver, black, or red. The camera is just slightly smaller than a deck of cards and will easily fit into a shirt pocket or purse. A large metal plate functions as the lens cover when the camera is closed. You push the plate down to turn the camera on, at which point a swooshing jingle lets you know it's powering up. Once the camera is open, there are just four visible elements on the front: a non-telescoping lens, a tiny AF illuminator lamp, a flash, and a tiny microphone. That's it.

On the back, there are six controls, all nicely placed, which surround an enormous 3-inch LCD. For me, there's something special about Sony's product design. Perhaps it's how the top edge of the camera slants down to create two diagonal lines at the top of the camera—giving you the impression of looking at something larger than it is. In fact, the LCD looks gigantic. Also, slight angles, slants, and irregularities on the camera's surface temper its austere, minimalist design and make it more pleasing to look at and hold.

I'm impressed with the DSC-T100's performance and image quality. The camera features a 5X optical zoom lens with a 5.8mm-to-29mm range (which is equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 35mm-to-175mm zoom) and has corresponding maximum f-stops of f/3.5 to f/5.6. This 5X optical zoom capability is a bit more than the 3X usual on cameras this size. Still, it would be nice to see the zoom range reach a wider angle.

The performance is a step up from previous Cyber-shot models. For example, the burst mode shot about two dozen frames pretty quickly, then slowed down a bit but still kept taking pictures for several dozen more frames. Past Sony cameras weren't this good in burst mode. The burst mode on the T50, for example, is downright sluggish.

On my lab tests, the DSC-T100 wasn't flawless, but it produced solid results. There was a little noise in the daylight shot and much more in my flash shot. Overall, though, the image was very good. Color was vibrant, although just a tad warm. In many real-world test shots—from outdoors to indoors, from still life to action shots, the DSC-T100 produced very good exposures. It also has an excellent flash for such a tiny camera.

Resolution averaged 1,900 lines, which is superb for an 8.1MP camera. Boot-up time was 2.3 seconds, also excellent for an ultracompact. The 3.6-second recycle time I measured was decent, but not exceptional. In addition, there was hardly any shutter lag.

Although the images the DSC-T100 took were quite sharp, the camera's lens displayed both barrel distortion (at the wide-angle end of the zoom range) and pincushion distortion (at the telephoto end). The distortion wasn't very prominent, but it was more than I'd like to see. This is a somewhat common problem with non-telescoping zoom lenses.

Perhaps taking a cue from Panasonic, which includes its version of mechanical image stabilization in all its point-and-shoot digital cameras, Sony integrates IS into this point-and-shoot. I'm happy to say that Sony's Super SteadyShot IS worked reasonably well in both low light and bright light.

Some features, however, didn't measure up to expectations. The high, 3,200 ISO mode, for example, produced fairly grainy, noisy photos that I recommend you stay away from. Also, although the camera has some onboard Adobe Photoshop–like filters, such as a fish-eye and soft focus, I'd stick with your image-editing program, which will give you far better results with better accuracy.

The DSC-T100's new menu structure is an improvement from that of previous Sony versions, although it's still not the most intuitive I've seen. That said, I'm impressed with the brief captions that explain various modes and functions. The face-detection features work pretty well, letting you recognize as many as eight faces within a given frame. In this mode, the camera tries to keep faces the priority and adjusts focus, strobe, exposure, and white balance, as well as implementing a prestrobe red-eye reduction function. Slide-show functions have also been enhanced, and you can even upload your own music clips to the camera.

Last, the DSC-T100 captures 640-by-480 movie clips at 30 frames per second to the capacity of the card in a file format Sony calls MPEG VX. The quality of the video was very good, with decent sound. The camera did a very good job of adjusting to various lighting conditions and capturing action shots. I also like that you can zoom (using optical zoom) during video capture.

Sadly, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100 costs more than $100 above competing ultracompact cameras, including the excellent Canon PowerShot SD1000. The DSC-T100 gives you more optical zoom power, but most users will find the SD1000 a better buy.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T100's test scores.

Compare the digital cameras mentioned above side by side