DP Review recently took a look at the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H7. The review was less than stellar. The H7 is the economy model of the series and does not offer the bells and whistles featured on the H9, which can be had for $75 difference. Also the review points out that the camera does not perform well in the creation of large prints!
“So, whilst the H7 does come in at a surprisingly low price for a camera with this level of specification, it’s hard to see why anyone wouldn’t pay the extra for the H9 unless they were on a seriously tight budget.
Putting aside the ‘is it worth saving $75′ issue the H7 has all the faults – and most of the good stuff – that we covered in length in the H9 review. The extra wideangle capability is still welcome, and the sheer versatility and creative potential of the 31-465mm range cannot be overstated. It offers an incredibly powerful feature set at a bargain price, and is, for the most part, capable of producing decent results for the average user (producing small prints) with point and shoot simplicity.
To put it another way, if you want a genuinely affordable big zoom camera for snapping the family that you can leave on ‘full auto’ all the time – and you rarely print your pictures bigger than 6×4 inches – the H7 is (at as little as $350 online) certainly worth a closer look.
But if you’ve got more exacting image quality standards, want to enlarge more or want to actually use all those advanced features I suspect that, like us, you’re going to find the H7 disappointing. At least the H9 has a great screen to take your mind off the fiddly controls and less-than-stellar results; the H7 is what it is – a budget model that, unfortunately, performs like one.”
