Sony CyberShot DSC-T2 Review

The Sony CyberShot DSC-T2 is a neat new camera with innovative features such as a 2.7" touchscreen LCD and 4GB of internal memory. After playing with the CyberShot DSC-T70, and finding out how great the touchscreen is, I finally got my hands on the T2 to test out.

The T2 is in the middle price range of their touchscreen line up but offers the distinct feature of having 4 gigabytes of build in memory. This means you won't have to buy a memory card for your camera! Though, if you needed the extra space, you can still purchase one and use it in your camera. The addition of the huge inernal memory adds a bit to the thickness and weight of the DSC-T2 though when compared to the other models. However it gives the camera a more rugged and tougher feel. My friend who owns the camera said she's dropped it and it still works.

The Sony Cybershot DSC-T2 comes in five bright and fun colors - black, white, hot pink, blue, and green.

Specs

8MP
3x optical zoom
Super Steadyshot Image Stabilization
4GB Internal Memory
2.7" touchscreen LCD

To take pictures, the top half of the front of the camera slides down, exposing the lens, flash, and AF assist beam. The lens is on the top left of the camera so watch out for those fingers getting in the way. You'll get used to not getting your fingers in the way over time though. The camera itself is very compact. Though the depth is increased it still seem very small due to its small width and height. For some reason, though it has a 2.7" touch screen LCD, it seems a lot smaller than the 3" widescreen LCD's on the cheaper Sony CyberShot DSC-T70. The LCD itself is not a widescreen LCD, and does not cover the entire back of the camera like it does on their other models. This leaves room for some buttons on the back of the camera, namely to preview pics, scrabook mode, and to zoom in and out of your pictures. I wish the LCD on the T2 was bigger. They could have put the preview button on the top of the camera, and also just include the scrapbooking button in the menus.

Another problem I have with the body of this camera is with the battery door, which you still have to manually lock after you close the door. It doesn't lock itself in place when closed.

To use the touchscreen, you just poke at it with the included stylus that you should attach to the wrist strap. The feature set is basically the same as the DSC-T70, which I don't have very many complaints about. It has the Super Steadyshot image stabilization, smile shutter, easy Auto focus point selection, as well as all the other in camera editing that you can do.

I'm not going to go over the entire feature set as it is identical to the DSC-T70, so just look at that camera's review.

However one thing I did notice, that I did not notice on the T70 was that it had a scrapbooking mode. In this mode, you can sort your pictures by day. For example you can view pictures only from September 1, 2008. Or it will have a header saying September 1, 2008 and display the pictures for that under the header and then below would be September 2, 2008 with pictures on that day below it. This feature is good for searching through your pictures as you dont have to scroll through your entire list sequentially if you know when you took the picture you are looking for. And with 4GB of internal memory you can store a lot of pictures without having to delete pictures.

Though the retail price is $350, I've seen the camera for as low as $250 during the sales which is very cheap. However at the time of this writing, Sony has released another 4GB camera called the DSC-T700 which comes in more sophisticated colors, rather than bright and vibrant. The DSC-T700 also retails at $430.