• Good image quality, typical 2 megapixel
• Cheap storage
• Ease of image transfer (once finalised disc will work in almost any CD-ROM drive)
• Big image stablised 10 x zoom lens
• Excellent available controls on outside of camera
• Interesting LCD viewfinder
• Silent focus & zoom mechanism
• One-push manual white balance
• Fly-by-wire manual focus ring on lens barrel
• Good selection of program modes: Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Night, Spot etc.
• Excellent InfoLithium battery pack & in-camera charging
• Camera settings stored between power-ups (even without the battery...)
• No need for additional AC adapter
• Good internal flash
• USB connectivity
• Audio with movie recording & Voice recording

• Price ($1299) (relative)
• Design, Size & Weight (subjective)
• Slow startup, focusing and shutter lag
• Auto Focus lack of "focus priority" (random focusing problems)
• Poor LCD frame cover (86%)
• Aperture priority crippled by minimum 1/30s shutter speed
• Tripod Mount
• Barrel distortion at wide angle
• Fairly nasty chromatic aberrations at full zoom

Overall conclusion

Here's my rating of the Sony MVC-CD1000: (2 megapixel ultra zoom class)

A few other reviewers have been as brave as to say that mini CD-R will be the future of storage in digital cameras. I'd have to place myself on the other side of that fence. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for it and I'm sure the CD1000 will sell well, but there's lots of things holding mini CD-R back, not least the physical size of the CD-R mechanism (and thus the camera), its speed and battery usage. It'll be interesting to see how many more products Sony release using mini CD-R.

From a storage cost point of view it's amazing value if you buy your mini CD-R's from the right places. As a camera the CD1000 performs well, that big zoom will keep even the most avid bird watcher happy and image quality is on par with the best 2 megapixel digital cameras.

Average

So which one should I buy? A question I get asked several times a day, and I wouldn't like to say. In a new addition to my reviews (after the amount of feedback I normally get) I've added a link to a specific forum in which you can discuss the review or ask me specific questions which I've not answered in these pages.

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