It’s no doubt that Sony is trying to be aggressive in whatever they’re trying to sell in the Indian market. Aggressive pricing, marketing and a wide range of products to cater consumers at every price point. Sony did the same thing with the compact digital cameras launched couple of months back. They launched a slew of point-and-shoot cameras including the mid-range DSC-W360. W360 is a simple camera that tries to take the load off the consumer to adjust the settings for taking a perfect picture. But does it deliver? We delve to find out.
Sony DSC-W360 is not the slimmest compact camera in the market but is thin enough to slip in to your pockets easily. The 16.7mm camera weighs approx. 120g and comes in a brushed metal color. Our unit came in a brushed silver color. The button placements on the camera are pretty simple too. The top end of the camera integrates an on/off and a shutter button whereas the rear consists of a 3-inch 230K pixels screen, camera mode switch, zoom in/out, nav key, menu, delete and preview buttons. The bottom part houses the memory card and battery as well as a place for the tripod and AV cable.
The package contents include the camera unit, Li-Ion battery, battery charger, wrist strap and a USB cable that doubles up as TV-out.
When it comes to usability, Sony has made this 14.1-megapixel shooter a breeze to use. The buttons and the menu settings are easy enough to understand for a person not very much into photography. A user can shoot images in three modes – Intelligent Auto (iAuto), Easy Mode and Program Auto. For users who don’t like to fiddle much with the settings, iAuto and Easy Mode is the way to go. iAuto automatically adjusts the camera settings like brightness, ISO sensitivity and scenes whereas Easy Mode allows to shoot still images using the minimum necessary functions. Program Auto has the shutter speed and the aperture value pre-adjusted but allows tweaking some settings from the menu.
Users also have the liberty to shoot pictures using different scenes like Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Landscape, Soft Snap, Snow, Beach, High Sensitivity, Underwater, Gourmet and Pet.
The picture quality of the images is not the best but good enough for a mid-range compact camera. The BIONZ imaging processor coupled with image stabilization and optical zoom worked pretty much in favor but it was the smile shutter that sometimes went awry. For the uninitiated, BIONZ is the Trade Mark name of the Image Processing System developed by Sony. Yes, the W360 has smile detection that clicks a picture as soon as the subject smiles.
The smile shutter can be activated easily by pressing the left key on the nav pad and the smile settings can be adjusted from the menu, so as to tell the camera on what level of ‘smile’ the picture is to be clicked. The smile shutter depends on various things like the facial expressions, smile and the accessories the subject wears (avoid hats, sunglasses etc.!). We found smile shutter to be ineffective in low light areas or sometimes the sensor not picking up the smile at all.
Other nifty feature you’d find is the Face Detection. The camera detects up to 8 faces and user can set to prioritize a particular face or even set the camera to focus on a child or an adult face.
Sweep Panorama is another feature worth bragging about. Switch on the Sweep Panorama mode and you can instantly take breathtaking pictures of lovely elaborating landscapes. A user can take images horizontally or vertically with resolution to up to 7152×1080 and 4912×1920 pixels respectively.
Moving onto its video capturing prowess, Sony has made things little exciting here by allowing users to take videos at 720p resolution. The movies are shot at 30fps using MPEG-4 compression. The video quality was good and it fared well when it was viewed on an HDTV. Sony gives two options for the videos – to be recorded in Fine quality, which the highest or Standard, a lower one. Undoubtedly, the fine quality video capture gives better output but at a price of consuming extra storage on the memory card.
Sony also bundles an AV cable with the camera where users can see the camera actions right on their TV sets or playback the captured content. To view the HD videos, consumers need to buy a proprietary HD Output Adapter Cable that is sold separately.
Finally the playback mode shows captured images and videos in a simple interface or users can even edit the clicked pictures right in the camera. Users can resize the image, reduce red-eye or sharpen them without modifying the original image.
Wrapping things up, we think Sony DSC-W360 goes for a particular set of crowd – those who don’t want to fiddle the minute camera settings for the best pictures. It tries to offer minimum control which is good for amateurs but users who want a little more control on the camera may feel left out. Nonetheless, it’s a good camera but a tad expensive. A couple grands less and Sony would find this product in more hands than now. It retails for Rs. 13,990.
Rating: 
Pros: Simple to use, Smile Shutter, Face Detection
Cons: Mediocre build quality, Price
Is that your little bro in the pic?
cute kid!
i just bought this couple of days ago.. Amazing pics.. very good quality…
I compared W360 with W370 and W380 and finally ended up with w360.. The difference was with the lens.. W360 comes with Carl Zeiss lens which makes the difference… Sony lens in 370 and 380 was giving pics with very poor quality…
it gives quality picture but poor hardware. it bigns to scratch within a month of use.
what about w350?i found that it’s lens and blurred was there and also bad manufacturing…so what about w360?
now i am trying to buy this one can any one suggest me………!
I´m really happy with the W360! Videos are bombastic. Panorama is poor in my opinion. Use it as party cam – TOP! Always in my pocket und it works. Nice article!