I have been looking at digital cameras quite a lot in the past few months, I have a lot of requirements for any camera that I might buy. The mavica fits the bill perfectly for some, and others it doesn't do very well at all. By the end of this review you should know why on both accounts.

First off I actually tested the MVC-CD200 with the exteded zoom option. The normal camera is about a 35mm-100 or so mm camera, the exted zoom camera is about 35mm-200mm, quite a big difference in picture zooming ability but it makes the camera about twice as long.

The key point when looking at the sony mvc-cd200,250,300,350,or 400 series cameras is the storage medium. This camera is in essense a normal camera but with a cd-burner added onto it. Albeit it is a mini cd burner but a burner none-the-less. Now this mini cd can be the non rewriteable or the rewriteable version. Either holds an amazing amount of data, each is about 200-250 meg of data storage. Now you might say so what I can easily store pictures on my computer, well I would say that with the top resolution 2 and 3 megapixel cameras you are talking about 1-2 megs per picture, and with a digital you are going to take a lot more pictures than with a film camera, your harddrive will fill up fast. Mini cd's are a great way to store a lot of pictures for about .10-.20 cents per cd.

The extra zoom on the model I tested was powerful, I work in a E/R and I was taking picture of staff members 50 down the hall and having it look like they were 5 feet away. The lense on the mavica's are all carl zeiss, so they will give you quality pictures, and that pretty much goes without saying with a sony. The flashes are very powerful and will easily handle night situations. This camera does have a good amount of options but because of the size of it, the buttons are not located close together, you sorta have to search the camera for them.

The lcd panel on the back is larger than most other cameras and for good cause, this camera has no optical viewfinder. Now when I tested it at night (i work at night so couldn't test it in direct sunlight) the lcd worked perfectly, but if like most lcds, it has problems in very bright sunlight, well then you would be out of luck, no backup. Pretty big con in my opinion but not for some I guess.

This camera is a lot bigger than most equivalent technology cameras that don't use mini cd's. This is of course due to it using the mini cd, but it is only 1/4 of a inch larger than the diameter of the cd itself. They really did try to make it as small as possible, with the given technology.

The camera is solidly built, right down to parts that could have been made cheaply if they had chosen, but they didn't. For instance the back panel that opens up so you can insert and extract the mini cd's could have been made cheaply, but instead is mostly metal with very hard plastic. Sony didn't skimp on this camera.

The battery umm uhh :p.... very sexy battery, sony has adapted their camcorder battery to their medium to large series of cameras, not only does this save them time, but puts a very proven battery, and very VERY long lasting battery into this camera. One of the coolest things about this camera other than the mini cd is the battery, it will tell you EXACTLY how much time is left on it before it runs out of juice. No more "low battery" signs, it starts out with about 3 hours of juice of continuous juice and will count down. Very cool battery system.

The mini cd does have a little catch, you have to finalize it when you want to view your pictures using a computer, you tell it you don't want to save any more pictures at this time and it burns them onto the cd. It was requires you format any new cd you put into it.

After you do finalize the mini cd you can put it into ANY cd-rom and instantly read it. No more usb cords at all. No more card readers. No more worrying about draining the juice on your camera. Very easy. Very user friendly.

Myself I'm looking for a camera to use on a 2 week trip to europe. If my trip was going to be 8 weeks, this would be the camera for me, but being only two weeks, storage isn't a huge concern but enough of one that I don't want to buy a ton of memory cards, nor do I want to spend the extra 200 for a mavica of equal megapixels.

This camera will run you 150-200 more than equal megapixel cameras. It is larger than equal megapixel cameras too, quite a bit larger in fact.

Now I did test out the 200 series camera, I think you'll be hard pressed to find the 200 anymore because the 300-450 series is higher quality. My review would probably fit the 300 and 350 but I'm honest and didn't want to put any review on something I haven't tested out.

Ignoring a couple of con factors, it is a great camera and for the right individual with the right requirements it would be perfect.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 599