Scratch me if you can - Sony's Titanium Coated W300
Reviewed on 01 March 2008

The annoying thing about carrying any gadget is that despite your careful supervision, that beautiful outer casing somehow always gets scratched. A big long ugly scratch either from having been dropped accidently or from the war it waged in your pocket with your car-keys. Sometimes your beloved camera ends up with many scratchy scars in testament to the hard days it’s seen. Well Sony’s W300 won’t have to worry about that.

The W300 has a titanium coating which is scratch resistant so even if you threw it in a big sack filled with angry cats it’s going to come out shiny smooth and ready for the next gala opening. Sony’s had quite a success with their Face Detection and Smile Shutter feature and the W300 has inherited the best of them, with advanced face detection to distinguish between adults and children and optimize the settings for the best portraits. It can track faces and does away with the need to press the shutter; all you need is a smile.

The pocket sized W300 is no lightweight either, it’s equipped with an amazing 13.6 Megapixels which makes for excellent enlargements and easy cropping. The alarmingly high resolution means, you could enlarge your photos up to the size of Cairo and the details would still be razor clear. It comes with a maximum sensitivity of 6400 with Sony’s Clear RAW Noise Reduction and Super Steady Shot Image stabilisation to make taking clear bright photos at night a breeze.

The D-Range Optimiser lights up the shadowy areas so you don’t have to worry about them while the Intelligent Scene Recognition takes the guesswork out of finding the right settings. Furnished with a 3x optical zoom lens and 2.7- Inch LCD, the W300 also has a viewfinder for those extra bright sunny days. A new EX High-Speed Burst Mode allows you to take photos at 5fps to freeze fast action.

The W300 is not just a tough cookie; it’s still a yummy one. Its performance rivals that of some of compact digital cameras but with the W300 you can casually throw the camera back in your pocket without worrying about your spare change doing a number on the W300’s beautiful body.