Sony DSCWX350 Digital Compact Camera with Wi-Fi and NFC (18.2 MP, 20x Optical Zoom) - Black

I don't know where to start this camera is so good. I bought it to replace my old Kodak point and shoot. I am neither a professional nor an enthusiastic amateur. I just want to be able to take good pictures quickly with as little thought as possible. This does that. Key features are TWO magic button modes - one is the straight forward point and shoot and the other does even more to prevent wobble or over-exposure. It does have a panoramic option and I have read the instructions and it seems easy to use but I haven't - yet. It also has other options - but again I haven't used those. In magic mode it recognised the type of shoot (night, portrait, scenic etc) very quickly and set appropriately. It was also very easy to switch from still to video - so much so I have taken a lot more video than usually. The battery life is excellent - it did 3 Florida theme parks plus lots of play back before needing a charge. However I had bought and charged a spare battery just in case. You can get bargains - I bought a Maxsimafoto one which was much cheaper than Sony (off Amazon) and just as good. I did use a very good quality SD card as this camera takes HD video. I bought a Memzi Ultima Pro SDHC card (off Amazon) which are recommended for these cameras. It did work very well but of course I can't tell you how another would have done. I have reviewed and downloaded my pictures and videos and they are excellent quality - even the sound. At a recent car show my son (aged 10) also used this and found it really easy and took some great photos. I have also used the wifi connection which is really useful but as I take a lot of photos I tend to take the card out and insert into my printer for transfer. This camera is light but feels well made. The controls are not too fiddly to work with long nails. It sits in the hand comfortably ready to use but is not so small you feel you have a toy. My only issue is the review and playback and I'm certain that's user error! It does have a lot of options on review which makes it harder to just look at the picture and then those before.

Fantastic little point and shoot camera. Excellent macro capability for my horticultural work. Many other functions to suit most situations. You can't adjust F-stops and aperture manually, but why waste precious photo opps doing that? Buy the biggest memory card it'll take. You'll have more capacity than you need. Image quality is superb. My only gripe and for most cameras nowadays is there's no optical view finder, just an electronic one which is useless in bright sunlight. Get round that by doing a few shots that usually capture the subject.

First, a bit of context. I am a Sony loyalist when it comes to point and shoots. My previous camera was the W530 14.1 MP Cybershot with a Carl Zeiss lense, and for the price I got it for, nothing came near it. My only reason for replacing it was that over the course of a few years the software on it had become glitchy, so it kept uncontrollably switching between focus modes. The photographs it could produce, especially in good light, were sensational for a camera of its time and class. So my next point and shoot had quite a job on its hands. The WX350 was acquired in the Black Friday deals, having already been cheaper than my old camera so that was a good start. It is quite fast on start up but not the quickest, taking around 2 seconds to get from off to photo-ready. The wheel for the shooting modes is nice and intuitive, and doesn't easily rotate on its own in the pocket. If you rotate it once the camera is active, you will be taken to a menu to fine tune your options. The menus are easy to navigate and comprehensive. The optical zoom is the most powerful I have come across for this camera type, and the resolution of daytime / well-lit images is superb. The biggest improvement on my old camera is the video mode; the HD resolution is a big step up, as is the sound capture. Other nice modes include handheld twighlight for shooting dim scenes without a tripod - it won't produce the highest quality images for print and display but it will capture memories and moments nicely and easily, and will be detected for use in the generally decent intelligent auto modes. Like all point and shoots, it isn't all plain sailing. The camera I have now is a replacement - the first one suffered after a few months of use probably as a result of me trying to do rapid snaps; turning the camera on and off too often too quickly. My advice would be to let the photo load after snapping and disappear before turning the camera off. The replacement has had no issues, and was organised efficiently by Amazon. The camera suffers from that old Sony fault of defaulting to macro in the auto mode for no apparent reason on rare occasions; this is corrected by aiming at backlighting, not difficult to address by not ideal. The back screen needs to be viewed from more or less dead on to get a good handle on the image captured - for me this is a very minor gripe. Far more problematic is the lack of shutter speed control; the camera does all the work. The camera generally does a good job but there are times when it would be handy to experiment. The truth is that no point and shoot is perfect. This camera however is very good for its class, and superb value at the price. I would not hesitate to buy it, and am happy to recommend it.

Being a bit of a gadget fetishist I have owned way too many compact cameras in my time. Of all of them this is the best small compact camera that I have tried. The real selling point of this camera is it's size and weight. It is a truly compact camera and even for it's diminutive size it is very light. Packed into this small camera is a long zoom lens and a host of features. However, this would all count for nothing if it didn't deliver in terms of picture quality. Overall, considering the type of camera and it's price the image quality is very good indeed. This is primarily a great camera for outdoor use. Its size and weight make it incredibly portable and the image quality in bright light is very good. To top it off it is easy to use (the auto modes generally do very well) and fast in operation. The quality is good from wide angle to full telephoto and that zoom lens really does reach a long way. Battery life seems pretty good and I really liked that I could charge the bettery in the camera using a standard phone charger. This meant that I could charge it from a cigarette lighter in the car on days out. You do need to bear in mind the weak points of a camera such as this. Personally, I do not mark the camera down because of these issues as they are inherent in the type of camera. For a very small, long zoom camera I have not found anything better. Firstly, this camera has a small sensor (although typical or compacts) combined with a rather "slow" lens (again this is typical of compacts). Slow in this context refers to how much light it lets through not how fast it focusses. Essentially what this means is that the results you get will deteriorate rapidly as the available light levels fall. Indoor photos without the flash for example, will not look anywhere near as good as daytime outdoor shots. However, to put this into context, to get a camera with a larger sensor and faster lens that will do well for indoor lower light shots (like the Canon S120, Canon G7x or Sony RX100) you will have to spend considerably more for a heavier, larger camera and give up that long zoom range. Secondly, this camera is designed for the beginner and for automatic use. Because of it's small size it does not have much in terms of external controls such as exposure compensation. The result is that if you do know what you are doing and want to change something you will have to dive into the menus to change that setting. Again this is inherent in this type of camera. Note that although this camera does not provide any flash compensation (an annoying oversight) the flash seems to be much better than that for the previous generation, the WX300, which had a tendency to washout anything too close to the camera.. The only specific issue with the camera for me is that it's screen is not very visible in bright light. (Not ideal for a camera that I really only use outdoors.) I solved this by buying a non-reflective phone screen protector and cutting it down to size for the camera. This only cost a couple of pounds.

I looked at loads of different cameras and reviews before making this purchase. The camera has loads of settings so you can get good quality pictures by playing around with them, it's the only one in its price range that has an whopping ISO of up to 12800 which is useful for low-light situations. You need to download and install the PlayMemories program from Sony onto your laptop or smartphone to use the wireless network connectivity feature which saves so much time when transferring pictures and videos. The video camera is of excellent quality and perfect for Vlogging but can only record for a maximum of 30 minutes due to EU regulations (otherwise it is technically a camcorder). The zoom is super powerful and goes up to 80x, I managed to get pictures of distant stars using the right aperture settings. Many people complained that the camera is too bright, but that can be adjusted easily using the settings! The battery lasted a very long time. It comes with no sdcard or instructions. The best point and shoot cameras on the market are Sony or Canon hands down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPNYcRbo9Ik

I purchased this to replace a 9 year old Fuji S5700 after spending many hours looking at specs, reviews and looking on camera comparison websites. This had no impact on my choice, however it's an extremely small camera and looks very nice. First impression after taking a number of pictures were disappointing. I think that I've gotten used to seeing pictures on websites that are taken by professionals with very expensive equipment and without considering this was expecting to be able to take the same high quality photos. This is not the case, certainly not on the auto settings at least. Don't get me wrong, the difference between the photos that this camera takes and my old camera are immense and it's clearly a much more modern camera. Taking a picture and then viewing it full screen on my desktop pc is very disappointing. Nothing seems very sharp and towards the edges it loses focus. If you then view them at the kind of size you look at them on webpages, for example 854x480 then they look much better. By default the camera is set up to take pictures in 4:3 format which seems a bit dated now. I've changed this to 16:9. The zoom is very good, colour rendition is pretty spot on compared to how I see things with my own eyes and the camera itself responds very quickly which is handy when you want to quickly grab it and take a picture before the subject moves. The camera automatically recognises if it needs to be in macro mode which is handy. My old camera had a dedicated macro button. One of the best features in my opinion is being able to transfer the pictures to my pc via wifi and it does this VERY quickly. The camera comes with a flimsy sheet of paper claiming to be the manual but it's more of a quick start guide. You can find the detailed manual here:[...] I purchased a SanDisk Ultra 32 GB SDHC Memory Card up to 80 MB/s, Class 10 FFP [Newest Version] with mine and have had no issues with it. The camera came partially charged, I plugged it in without turning it on and it was fully charged within the hour. The top of the camera has a charging indicator light. It comes with a USB to mains charger and the battery is removable. Overall I'm happy now that I'm over my initial disappointment. One thing to watch out for is how you hold the camera so as to not cover the flash!

The pictures the camera takes are fabulous, but the wireless picture sharing between devices just doesn't work, despite hours of trying to get it to hook up to my ipad. If this feature is important to you, don't get this camera. If you're happy waiting until you can connect your camera to a computer with a wire it's a fabulous camera.

Firstly I must say I am no great photographer. I've owned DSLRs but have never really "got going" as the camera is too big to take with you all the time. This by contrast is so small and versatile. I bought the snug fitting Sony case and haven't looked back. It's with me all the time. Using it is as simple as you want to make it. If use the intelligent auto settings which you means it's point and shoot, but there are many as yet untried other options. I've been particularly impressed with how easy it is to get photos onto social media with Sony Memories App. I bought this as a bit of a treat toy for myself but can say it's exceeded all expectations. I LOVE IT. I've now had it several weeks. Just as pleased. It's always in my pocket.