Apart from the expected battery charger and USB cable Sony also include
a wrist lanyard, TV connection cable and CD with PDF manual in the box.The lens of the TX1 is covered by a sliding door – opening this
turns the camera on and gets it ready to shoot. The whole camera has a
solid, well built feel about it and the smooth sliding action on the
lens cover reinforces that.

All camera operations are controlled via menus presented on the 3”
touchscreen. There are a variety of manual options possible, for
example you can set the ISO and shooting parameters or tap the screen
to select a focus point. In practice though the most useful setting is
the “Intelligent Picture” mode which is what I left it on for the
majority of the review.

This fully automatic mode is very impressive. The TX1 analyses the
scene in front of it and selects one of its built in shooting programs,
which it displays on the screen so you can see what’s going on. Wave it
around outdoors and “Landscape” is chosen, move to a dimly lit building
and you see “Twilight” mode selected. All very painless.

Subjectively, picture quality is very good from what I could tell and
the camera does better than most at low light/high ISO settings.
Unfortunately mother nature conspired to make it difficult for me to
get out and take any photos during my testing period so the gallery is
a little bare – I did get a representative sample of the panorama mode
though.

When plugged into the base the camera enters a fully automatic mode
using its built in smile and face detection features to scan the room
looking for pictures of happy, grinning people. When it finds one it
takes a photo.