Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700 review

As a playback device, the T700 definitely succeeds thanks to its large, sharp LCD and undemanding navigation and image management. The camera's PhotoMusic slide-show feature is fun too, and allows you to select from five visual and three face-priority effects, and eight audio tracks to add to a slide show (you can use your own music too). All this enjoyment drains the 680mAh battery pretty fast, however.

A key ingredient to the T700's package is the PMB software. Once installed on a Windows PC -- yep, it's Windows only -- all you need to do is connect the camera to a USB port and the software wakes up and walks you through importing images. Then with another click of the Easy Export button on its main toolbar, it'll send the images back out to the camera, shrinking them to VGA resolution -- good enough for showing people on the camera's screen while leaving you plenty of space for more pictures. The software handles organisational tasks such as tagging photos as favourites so you can easily find them once they're back living on the camera. PMB can be used to directly upload to sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket and YouTube as well.

Keep in mind that at this low resolution, you don't really want to actually give the photos on the camera to other people or print from the album, and they simply look bad when directly connected to a large-screen HDTV. Also, in order to use or view the internal memory you cannot have a Memory Stick card inserted in the camera. Once a card is in, the T700's memory is basically off limits. In order to access it again, say to show people stored images, you must remove the card. Annoying, yes, but better than the implementation for the Cyber-shot DSC-T2, which required you to fill up its 4GB memory before you could use a Memory Stick at all.

Conclusion
Overall, the experience offered by the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T700 is enjoyable, especially if your main objective is to shoot tonnes of pictures in good light and then show them to all your friends.

Edited by Nick Hide