As shown in Figure 3, the front of the camera is very simple. It has the retractable lens, the AF illuminator, a series of small holes for the microphone and the flash. As with most of these point-and-shoot cameras, the lens protrudes slightly even when in the closed position.

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Figure 3: The Sony Cyber-shot W290.

The top of the camera, shown in Figure 4, has three small holes for the speaker, the on/off button, and the smile shutter button. At first we thought that the smile button was placed too close to the shutter button and might be inadvertently pressed, but in use, we found that the regular shutter button was slightly raised while the smile button was not. So it was not easy to confuse the two. In fact, because the shutter button was slightly raised, it was easy to find and press the shutter without looking.

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Figure 4: The top of the camera.

The right side of the camera, as shown in Figure 5, has a place to attach the wrist strap.

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Figure 5: The side of the camera holding the wrist strap.

The other side of the camera has no openings or ports. It only sports a “5X” logo indicating the amount of optical zoom that the camera has.

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Figure 6: The other side of the camera.

As shown in Figure 7, the bottom of the camera has the battery and memory card compartment, a tripod socket, and a connector that can be used for the USB connection or the video output connection. As you can see in Figure 8, one cable, which is included with the camera, provides both the video and the USB connections.

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Figure 7: The bottom of the W290.

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Figure 8: The included dual-purpose cable.

When viewing the bottom of the camera, you will note that the tripod socket is closer to the center of the camera than it really should be. This posed a problem with several of the tripods we tried because the battery/media card door would not open fully when the tripod mount was attached. We often take pictures with a tripod, then simply take out the memory card while the tripod mount is still attached. So for us, this was an inconvenience. While it won’t affect all photographers or all tripod users, it is something to be aware of.

While we are talking about the battery door, we must state that while the camera itself feels very sturdy, the battery door itself seems to be flimsy, especially in comparison to other cameras of this type. While we are not sure if it would break easily, we would suggest that you be aware of this and handle it gently.

The battery compartment also holds the memory stick. This camera comes with only 11 MB of internal flash memory, so you will need to purchase a memory stick with the camera. Unfortunately, Sony insists on promoting their own proprietary memory sticks that are useful only in Sony equipment while most other manufacturer are now using the newer and more interchangeable SDHC memory cards. In any case, the camera takes a Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo card.