PHOTO QUALITY. This 20-megapixel superzoom camera captured images with good quality. We judged this model very good for outdoor performance, such as shooting landscapes in the daytime; good for indoor performance, such as photographing a well-lit basketball game in a gym.
FLASH. The Cyber-shot H400 captured flash shots that were good. In our distance test, we found the camera's flash could illuminate most subjects that are closer to the camera, but had some problems with distant subjects. The flash also has good, relatively even coverage.
LENS. It has a very long 63x zoom lens that can be great for travel and sports shooting when you need to zoom in far to capture your subjects. The lens also has very wide-angle (24.5mm) capability that's very useful for landscapes and group portraits, although you may notice a bit of distortion when you're shooting faces up close, for instance.
IMAGE STABILIZATION. This is an important feature with a long zoom lens; taking hand-held shots at the telephoto end of the zoom range can generally blur or soften images due to the slight movement of your hands. Shooting zoom set at 4x in well-lit scenes, this model did a good job of minimizing the effects of camera shake. In low-light settings, its performance was fair and often produced blurry photos. Overall, the shake reduction results from our tests were fair.
SPEED. In terms of performance, the Sony Cyber-shot H400 powers up in a moderate amount of time.
VIDEO. The Sony Cyber-shot H400 takes poor video. It captures HD video at 1280 x 720 30p. As for sound, it captures fair audio in mono.
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS. It has an electronic viewfinder, a rarity for point-and-shoot models, which we found to be good. This superzoom is much bigger, thicker and heavier than most in its class. Although this model has many features and controls, this superzoom is bulky and heavy, which may not make it the best model if you travel a lot.
