Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W130 (silver)

More on this product: review; user reviews; specifications; compare; shop

Share
- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Reddit
- Facebook
E-mail
Print

CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
Detailed editors' rating

Average user rating:
Write your own review
See all user reviews

Product summary

The good: Fast shutter; slightly longer-than-normal lens; handy on-camera editing and slide show functions

The bad The bad: Softening around edges; noisy at ISO 800 and higher

The bottom line: The W130's quick performance and decent image quality make it a solid follow-up to the W90, and a good choice for a pocket point-and-shoot camera.

Specifications: Digital camera type: Ultracompact; Resolution: 8.1 megapixels; Optical zoom: 4 x; See full specs

Price range: $189.99 - $213.99

See all products in the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W130 series

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Will Greenwald
Reviewed on: 02/21/2008

Sony inches its Cyber-shot W-series of compact snapshot cameras forward with the Cyber-Shot DSC-W130. This 8-megapixel shooter sports a shiny, colorful new shell and a slightly longer lens, but otherwise feels like a carbon copy of its predecessor, the Cyber-shot DSC-W90.

Rounded corners and an attractive brushed metal front plate give the W130 a more stylish look than the W90. Available in silver, black, and pink, it offers some choices for gadget color coordination (though not as much as its 7-megapixel little brother, the DSC-W120, which comes in black, silver, pink, and blue). Besides the new look, the W130 gets a tweaked control layout from the W90. While it still uses irritatingly small, circular buttons for menu control, the buttons are laid out comfortably around the camera's direction pad and feel much more accessible to large-thumbed users.

Despite the makeover, the W130 offers few differences from its predecessor. The camera's 32mm- to 128mm-equivalent, f/2.8-5.8 lens is the only significant upgrade, offering a slightly longer zoom and wider angle than the W90's 35mm- to 105mm-equivalent lens. The W130 keeps the W90's 8-megapixel resolution, 2.5-inch LCD, and optical viewfinder. It also includes the W90's face detection function with Smile Shutter, a handy mode that lets the camera automatically take pictures of subjects when they smile. It gets a slight downgrade in the internal memory department, carrying only 15MB of space instead of the W90's 31MB. Of course, you should never rely on internal memory, so either camera would require you to pick up a Memory Stick Duo for shooting more than a handful of photos.

A generous set of onboard photo retouching and viewing features lets you tweak the photos you shoot with the W130. The camera can trim and rotate (in 90-degree increments) your pictures after you take them, and digitally remove red eyes. It can also apply sharpening, soft focus, and a variety of other effects to adjust your pictures. Most of these effects feel more like silly toys than useful features, but they can still be fun to play with. The W130 can also display photo slide shows with MP3 music soundtracks, either on the camera itself or (with an optional cable or cradle) on your HDTV.

The W130 performed quickly in our lab tests, with the exception of its flash, which took a long time to recycle. After a 1.8-second wait from power-on to first shot, the camera could capture a new picture once every 1.4 seconds with the onboard flash turned off. With the flash enabled, however, that wait doubled to 2.8 seconds. The shutter feels pleasantly responsive, lagging only 0.4 second with our high-contrast target and 1 second with our low-contrast target. In continuous shooting mode, the W130 captured 15 full-resolution shots in 7.5 seconds for a respectable rate of 2 frames per second.

See more CNET content tagged:: lens,; camera,; flash,; picture,; Sony Corp.

User reviews

Average user rating: 0 stars Not yet available
Back to product review
My rating: 0 stars Write review

Showing 1 of 1 user reviewSee 1 user review
4.5 stars

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful

"Excellent Point & Shoot!"

by JmaxJpeg on May 15, 2008

read more
See 1 user review Write review

Submit your review

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W130 (silver)

1. Rate this product:: (Mouse over the stars to rate this product and click to set your rating.)
2. One-line summary:(Summarize your review in one line. 10 characters minimum; required.): 0 of 55 characters
3. Pros:(Tell us what you like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.): 0 of 250 characters
4. Cons:(Tell us what you don't like about this product. 10 characters minimum; required.): 0 of 250 characters
Bottom-line summary:(Explain to us in detail why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product's features and functionality, and your experience using the product. This field is optional.): 0 of 5000 characters; Submit