Plemix

I am so glad to bring you one of the web’s first hand-on reviews of Sony’s T700! The
T700 can take very good pictures and share it with the 3.5” screen. Can’t wait to unveil all its secrets? Read on.

The package is one crowded party. Besides the camera, battery, charger, an AV/USB cable, a user’s guide and a CD-ROM there is also a pen!



The model under review is the silver version. There are 4 other colors available including Gold, Grey, Pink and Red. In my opinion, silver is the best match for the metallic body, which has a solid and durable feeling. Slide the lens cover up to reveal the lens and turn on the camera. The sliding mechanism is not very smooth, probably because a smoother design would allow the cover to be slid up accidentally.



The T700 has 10.1MP, which is quite modest for a flagship model. The T700 has double anti-blur feature: the Optical SteadyShot image stabilization shifts the lens to counter handshakes and the High Sensitivity ISO 3200 allows for minimal exposure time.



There are not many buttons on the T700. To the left of the shutter button there is a Power button for viewing images without exposing the lens. There is also a Replay button for you to view your entire image collection instantly. The zoom rocker is definitely the smallest I have seen. It does a decent job in moving the 35-140mm equivalent lens.



The 3.5” screen is overkill for a camera. It is larger than most MP4 players and smartphones. It isn’t the kind of “large without substance” screens found in cheap MP4 players though. This one is bright, colorful and touch-sensitive! It handles many of the day-to-day operation of the camera including changing exposure settings and setting up slideshows replay of photos.



The T700 accepts Sony’s own stamina battery and Memory Sticks, which are common among CyberShot cameras. I was a bit skeptical about the battery life because of the huge LCD screen, but it turns out that the T700 has quite a lot of stamina.



The 3.5” screen can display a lot of information. You can also tap on the screen to select focus point or enter into camera menus. The screen works best when you tap on it with your fingernails, otherwise it may miss some of your instructions.



Face Detection has become a “must-have” for point-and-shoot cameras. On the T700 you can adjust the sensitivity of this feature or the preference between children/adult faces. It recognizes faces quickly and accurately most of the time at the default setting so I doubt if there is any need to change the settings.



The shooting setting screen can be accessed by pressing the Menu button on the bottom left corner. The buttons are large enough for your thumb but the layout is not excellent. Other than the plain color scheme the menu suffers from poor organization which requires you to “hunt down” the setting in different tabs. With that much of space I think the T700 could do better.



The painting pen is probably designed for kids (look at the size of it) for drawing on the picture in Edit Mode. Need I say anything about the picture quality? The camera can take very sharp pictures and displays them in the 3.5” screen. The T700 can also hook up with PhotoTV-enabled Bravia televisions and give a High-Definition presentation of your favorite photos.

The T700 is an excellent camera with a lot of features to help you take the best photos. The 3.5” screen allows you to control the camera and share photos with ease. The menu needs a bit improvement but you will get used to it soon enough.

If you want a cheaper alternative, check out the T77 as well. Here is a brief comparison between the two:



The T700 loses to the T77 in terms of thickness (16.4mm vs 15mm). The 1.4mm difference is not significant in real world. You can probably keep both cameras in any of your pockets.



By comparison, the 3.5” screen on the T700 trumps the smaller screen (3”) in the T77 utterly. However please bear in mind that a 3” screen is still considerably bigger than most other cameras…



The other major difference is internal storage. The T700 has a huge 4GB storage while the T77 only has 15MB. If you are going to buy a 4GB MemoryStick for use with the T77 anyway, you may want to upgrade your screen for a little more money.