Sony Smart Lens DSC-QX10 review

IMAGE QUALITY – CLICK ON SAMPLES TO ENLARGE

As we mentioned above, the Smart Lens is based on an existing Sony compact camera. The QX10 is based around the excellent Sony Cyber-Shot WX200. It has a 10x zoom with an f/3.3 lens in front of a typical compact camera sensor measuring 1/2.3in. It may sounds run-of-the-mill but it’s an excellent little camera and one that can outperform most smartphones.

You can look at the Sony Cyber-Shot WX200 review if you want a clear idea of how this camera compares to other compacts. Here we’ve compared it to a typical smartphone camera, from last year’s excellent Samsung Galaxy S3. The QX10 has a huge 18-megapixel resolution, which makes direct pixel-to-pixel comparisons with an eight-megapixel smartphone quite tough.

The 10x optical zoom is the big draw here, something most smartphones are sorely lacking. Many let you zoom in by cropping the sensor for you, but doing so produces terrible results, as you can see in this comparison.

If you need to zoom in (the main image is a pixel-to-pixel crop at full zoom) then the QX10 is far superior to any smartphone …

… digital zoom on the S3 is a joke in comparison (full zoom 1:1 pixel crop), as you’d expect …

… and even the much-vaunted Nokia Lumia 1020 can’t compete (picture shot on a darker day)

Unsurprisingly, the QX10 has noticeably more fine detail in outdoor pictures on a bright but overcast day and it’s far sharper into the corners of the frame. However, that’s only when you’re looking at the pictures full-screen on a large monitor or zooming in to look at them at 100%. If your main use for photos is to shrink them down and share them online then that extra detail will be largely lost.

If you’re shooting wide and resizing your images to share online then the QX10 has few advantages …

… over a typical smartphone camera such as the Galaxy S3’s, though the S3’s exposure was rarely as well balanced

What won’t be lost is that the QX10 is far more mature than any smartphone we’ve seen when it comes to judging exposures and get the colour balance right. It’s also better at focusing in low-light conditions, it then takes marginally better photos in lowlight the difference are slight against the latest models. There are 11 scene modes to cover most situations, but no manual exposure controls through the app.

Our S3 had trouble focusing in this test, once we got a clear shot this 1:1 pixel grab show soft details plus a lack of contrast and plenty of picture noise

By comparison this 1:1 pixel section from the QX10 is far more assured, yes noise reduction has dumbed down the detail a little but the coloured noise is gone and contrast is good

CONCLUSION

Despite its shortcomings can’t help but admire the Smart Lens QX10 for being different and its versatility certainly brings a spark of creativity to your photography. However, despite Sony’s best efforts it just isn’t as convenient to use as the equivalent compact camera. The process of sending your snaps to your phone is just too disruptive to the process of taking them, and even if you disable this, which rather defeats the point, it’s still very sluggish.

Putting the QX10 up against the WX200, we know which one we’d rather take on holiday with us, and it’s not the device we’d have to disable our work email notifications on. At £179 the QX10 is around same price as its camera sibling, which is a little disappointing given its cut-down nature, the lack of a flash being a major failing for this kind of camera.

That’s not to say the Smart Lens won’t find fans. If you like to share lots of your pictures having just taken them but bemoan not having an optical zoom, and don’t like the everyday bulk of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, then this could be just the thing. However, most of us will still continue to prefer having separate devices and the flexibility that provides.