The Sony Cybershot DSC-W100 is fairly good camera with an average feature set. While it has a manual exposure mode, it lacks custom white-balance which is common in most ultra-compact digital cameras. It also has preset focus distances, including infinity which is very useful for shooting from moving vehicles. The lack of custom white-balance is mostly relevant indoors where this camera often leaves a noticeable color cast.

Image quality is above average for an ultra-compact digital camera. Mostly, noise levels where good until ISO 400 and even ISO 800 is usable for small prints. The Sony W100 appears to have a very sharp lens and produces sharp images at low ISO settings. The noise reduction system appears to soften details as ISO increases. However, the softness only starts to be significant at ISO 400. Otherwise, both exposure and focus are accurate. Other image quality characteristics such as distortion, corner softness and purple fringing are average for this class of camera. Color was accurate outdoors, but not under artificial light. It is also worth noting that color saturation is lower than most consumer-oriented, although it is more accurate.

The bottom line is that even though the Sony W100 is a good ultra-compact camera, there are several models which are more compelling. In terms of image quality, the Fuji Finepix F30 still leads the pack and also brings spectacular battery life and speed of operation. Contrarily to the W100, the F30 has semiautomatic modes but not fully automatic exposure. More importantly, the F30 has custom white-balance. It also has a superior LCD screen, but lacks an optical viewfinder. Another better camera is also the Canon Powershot SD800 IS which has a stabilized wide-angle lens but no manual controls. Finally, there is also the Canon Powershot SD550 with no manual exposure mode, but excellent image quality and custom white-balance. For an ultra-compact digital camera with full-manual controls, the 10 megapixels HP Photosmart R967 with its 3" LCD screen is worth a look. The R967 has lots of powerful features, including an extremely accurate automatic white-balance system and in-camera panorama stitching.