Sony Cyber-shot DCS W80

Sony’s 7.2 megapixel DSC-W80 boots quickly, and its 3x zoom lens focuses with minimal shutter delay. Plus, this cam includes a traditional, if tiny, optical viewfinder!

The W80’s optical image stabilization—at low shutter speeds the camera will move a lens element slightly to compensate for hand shake—performed well in our tests. To further combat hand shake, Sony pairs this feature with increased ISO speeds, depending on shooting conditions, which served up mixed results due to high noise.

The W80 also sports the latest buzz in digicams—face-detection technology. This may sound like bunk, but it actually works. Enable face detection, and the camera will seek out and frame up to eight faces in a shot, ensuring they are in sharp focus. We did notice a significant improvement in group-portrait shots when using this feature.

Image quality was decent—shots were well exposed with good color saturation. However, noise artifacts became quite obvious at 400 ISO and above, rendering the higher ISO settings all but useless.