I find w5 a good option against all others against the market cos of its ease of use....
it is typical sony with high end quality and terrific pictures.The resolution of the 2.5 inch LCD is VERY good......... you wanna keep the photos in there and not transfer to PC.
First, i did a lotta research and decided it would have to be a SONY and so I went for this cool-looking didgicam with a reasonable price tag of Rs.11, 500(including the separately bought Memory Stick PRO 256mb.)
The carl-zeiss-vario-tessar lens is top-notch...and its retractable...(comes out and goes inside on shutting off) really cool!!.
The camera is tightly biuld and feels long-lasting.
The 2.5 inch, 5.1 megapixel screen is terrific and so is the interface.
It took me about 30 mins to learn the whole functioning of the camera.
The zoom is good, you have slideshow feature and night mode which is good too
.Flash..WOW!i switch off the light an the whole room came in great detail!autofocus is satisfactory.The video is limited time as this is not a camcorder but still good mpegs, not much detail in the video though..
Batteries provided are good enough for continous use of 5hrs or 78 photos on full charge.I went to mahabaleshwar and had to keep taking the batteries out to prevent from draining..thats how the worked for whole day.
The only problem I have is that the pictures blur very easily on the slightest moment .There is no steady-shot . When you capture blurred photos, like just running and stopping to take a photo, you gotta wait atleast three seconds.And the autofocus andall....expext a delay of 2-4 seconds depending on the mode.
The daytime modes(snow, sun, aquatic, night and tropical) are good enough but delay in phot processing takes an astronomical 3.5 to 4 seconds!!!!! so a whiff of a movement..and your pic is blurred.
Burst mode is slower than expected, multi burst(frame by frame photo-16 frames) is good.
inbuilt speaker is god enough for listening.
TV out is nice and installing the usb-software is very easy.
In all a gud buy, but now..theres so much variety and cost cuts this camera is for 10, 500 and olympus and panasonic and great digicams which are waterproof and have steady-shot which is better.But still if you want sony reliablity go for it!