Sony's T line of digital point-and-shoot cameras is known for being slim, sexy and hitting your pocketbook hard. The DSC-T700 is no exception. Currently available for $399.99 in a variety of colors, the camera is only 0.66 inches (16 mm) deep, and housed in a sleek, brushed metal exterior. Rather than a traditional lens cap, the T700 has a distinctive sliding plate that covers half of the camera's front, moving downward to reveal the lens below. We found the body to be solid and sturdy, quite unlike the majority of point-and-shoot cameras.

The T700 uses a touch screen as the primary means of controlling the camera, with a high-resolution 3.5-inch, 921,000-dot screen. Pointing and tapping sounds like an easy way to control a camera. Unfortunately, the touch screen response felt slow to respond, and often inaccurate. This made changing settings difficult and frustrating, especially while trying to grab a shot quickly

While the camera is indisputably gorgeous, there was obviously some preference given to form over function, as the lens is located on the top right, where it can easily get covered with a finger. Additionally, with a screen that takes up the entire back panel, there was little concession made for the fact that you actually have to hold the camera steady while taking a picture, save for a couple of raised vertical lines on the rear right side.

The T700 has 4 gigabytes of built-in memory, enough to store thousands of photos without needing a memory card. Sony has promoted this camera as a sort of pocket photo album, where you can keep small versions of all your old photos. Unfortunately, this feature seemed tacked-on and poorly executed, particularly when it comes to the software provided to manage the photo album contents.

The T700 is distinctly short on manual controls, but has a competent automatic exposure system, including Easy Mode, which completely removes all user input except image size, flash and timer. It also has scene recognition, face recognition with smile detection (which can automatically photograph when your subject cracks a grin), and anti-blink mode, which will detect if someone closes their eyes when you take a photo, and snap a second one as soon as they open them.

We were unimpressed by the camera's limited range of shutter speeds (1/1000 seconds to 1 second) and the inability to control aperture settings, useful when trying to control the depth of focus.

Performance (read in-depth lab performance at DigitalCameraInfo.com)
In our in-depth testing, the T700 showed good color accuracy, especially in reproducing blues, greens and skin tones. However, it really struggled in low lighting conditions, and couldn't maintain the fine color accuracy it displayed under bright lights. In our resolution test (which measures image detail rather than megapixels), the T700 didn't fare very well. It was able to capture whites accurately under most light sources, and was able to reproduce a good range of both lights and darks in a single image. The T700 really impressed us with its ability to minimize image noise, the insidious visual static that adds speckling to your images.

When shooting video with the T700, you'll face the same lighting problems we encountered during our still image testing: the camera does pretty well in bright lights, but hits the  wall when it comes to dark areas. Unfortunately for such a pretty camera, it won't function too well on a dimly lit dance floor or in a cozy neighborhood bar.

Comparisons (read in-depth lab comparisons at DigitalCameraInfo.com)
We compared the Sony T700 to the Canon Powershot SD1100IS, Nikon Coolpix S51c, Samsung NV40 and Sony DSC-T100.

The Canon Powershot SD1100IS outperformed the Sony when it came to color accuracy, white balance and low light performance, but fared worse with image noise levels. The Canon doesn't have a cool touch screen, gobs of built-in memory or drop-dead good looks, but it only costs about $150. Call it a recession special.

The T700 outperformed the similarly styled (though sans touch screen) Nikon S51c in every test bar low light. That said, the Nikon distinguishes itself by including built-in Wi-Fi, which lets you send photos directly from the camera, without connecting to a computer. While This Nikon model debuted at a similar price to the T700 a year ago, is now available for $180

Samsung proved themselves to be quite an up-and-comer with the NV40, which danced circles around the Sony in every lab test except color accuracy. However, the NV40 is plagued with a horrific interface which is overly complex, difficult to use and hard to recommend.

Finally, the Sony T100 is the T700's predecessor, and shares much of the same appealing style. It also has a better zoom, longer battery life and better performance in low light, image noise and dynamic range tests. You don't get the cool touch screen with the T100, but that also don't have to deal with the frustrating imprecision that comes with that cutting-edge feature.