Sony CyberShot DSC W50 Review

Overall Rating

Excellent picture quality; Very good battery life; Simple to use with user-friendly menu system; Very elegant to look at; Large LCD display; Easy to transfer material to your PC using cable; even easier if your PC has a card reader.

All of the good points are outweighed by a fatal flaw with the Memory Stick Duo design which can result in the loss of ALL the material on your Memory Stick. PLEASE research the 'C:13:01 File Format Error' with ALL Cyber shot cameras before considering buying one!!!

I originally had a Cybershot W35 camera and was very impressed with the picture quality, which strongly influenced my decision to purchase the W55 when I felt like buying a new camera. However, I originally thought that my W35 had become faulty, as I began to get a blue screen on the LCD, accompanied by a continuous beeping tone, and a message saying 'C:13:01 File Format Error'. At first, removing the memory stick and reinserting it seemed to do the trick...until I hooked up my camera to my laptop and saw that ALL of my photos and videos were inaccessible! They had seemingly disappeared. When I took out the memory stick, I saw that it had a hairline crack down the middle and assumed that this had caused the problem. I therefore disposed of it and invested in a new 2GB GENUINE Sony memory stick I was horrified when my camera worked fine for a few days, then the same thing happened again. This time, the memory stick was in perfect condition, so I attributed the error as down to a fault with the camera. And so, I purchased the W55... BIG MISTAKE. I inserted the same memory stick into my brand new W55, and the same error occurred after only a couple of hours! It was then that I decided to do some online research, and discovered that this is a HUGE problem! There are literally hundreds of sites and forums dedicated to this issue, and Sony now even offer a program download from their website which is supposed to recover around 95% of files from your memory stick when your camera has been affected by this issue. Yet they seem to be doing nothing else about it, and continue to sell these products. I have sent them an e-mail...and am still waiting for a response. So far, it seems there is no way around this issue. It affects ALL cameras from the Cybershot range, and it also does not matter whether you use a Sony-branded memory stick or Sandisk, or any other brand. It happens with ALL of them. On discovering this, I returned my W55 to the shop for a full refund and replaced it with the Samsung L77. Slightly reduced image quality, but well worth putting up with...I'd rather have any photos than no photos at all! For this reason, I cannot recommend the W55 under any circumstances - or any Cybershot camera, for that matter. This error does not occur if you use the camera's internal memory...but what good is a few megabytes when you're taking 7mp photos and possibly a few videos as well?! It is useless without a memory stick. My advice. The feeling of utter horror when you realize you have probably lost a fortnight's worth of holiday photos is really not worth it. It's such a shame, as everything else about this camera was perfect...but without being able to use it to its full potential, it becomes an expensive paperweight.