There's no denying that the Sony T-500 is a highly stylish and sophisticated looking camera. With an ultra slim body measuring 97.0 x 59.3 x 21.4mm, available in silver, black or red brushed metal, you can turn the camera on either by pressing the ‘Power' button at the top of the camera body or by sliding down the lens cover that makes up the front of the camera body - like all the other cameras in the T-Series. Once this cover has been pulled down it reveals the lens, internal flash and speakers.

A large touchscreen LCD monitor fills the rear of the camera body and offers a resolution of 230,400 pixels. Everything other than the shutter, zoom, power and playback is operated via this touchscreen system; even the focus area if you want more control over object focus. This is quite an original feature and soon becomes second-nature and a far more flexible way of altering focus than a standard spot AF system. There is a slight lag when you touch the screen to adjust manual focus area, though, so you have to be a little patient and wait for the focus area to change rather than keep dabbing at the screen.

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Although touchscreen does seem to be the way that most higher-end compact cameras are going, it can be a little limiting at times. Inevitably, the screen does tend to suffer from finger smudges after a while, making it pretty difficult to check that a shot is in focus, especially in brighter conditions. This wouldn't be such a problem if there were an alternative viewfinder, but you're relying on this screen to do everything from menu set-up to playback and HD video operation. Adjusting the LCD's brightness to ‘Bright' gets around some of the problem, but keep this powered up for too long and you will find your battery quickly expires.

It's possible to buy protective film covers for the DSC-T500's vital screen, but unfortunately there's nothing included in the box to fit onto the screen straight away, not even a protective pouch. Leaving the camera screen so vulnerable you would need to be extra careful when taking the camera out and about with you in order to avoid unsightly scratches.

The menu system is well thought out and easy to control. ‘Display' has its own easy to access options so you can set whether the screen is filled with shooting info like battery life, shooting mode and flash settings, or alternatively you can clear the screen so it only shows your framed or playback image. It's also pretty easy to adjust your record mode between ‘Auto Adjustment', ‘Scene Selection' and ‘Program Auto'. There's not really any advantage to having a touchscreen to control features like this, but it feels intuitive enough.

The Sony T500 comes with nine different preset shooting modes including the more unusual ‘Soft Snap' and ‘Beach' as well as a good range of ISO settings ranging from Auto, 80 to 3200. Combined with ‘Double Anti-blur', this gives you extra control when capturing images in low light.

As well as stills the Sony T-500 is capable of capturing three different types of movie files for either web upload or (if you choose either of the higher quality modes) for viewing on an HDTV. Capturing your movies couldn't be simpler as it's really just a case of flicking the switch surrounding the shutter button from ‘stills' to ‘movie' mode. Set-up is easy and with the ability to zoom in and out during capture you can create some smooth looking movies. With the docking station that comes bundled with the Sony T-500 it's very easy to get the camera plugged into your TV and an AV cable comes as standard.

Unfortunately, the size of the LCD screen and, presumably, the amount of power needed to operate the touchscreen, mean that the Sony T500 we reviewed had an extremely disappointing battery life. After a mere ten shots the battery life display started showing that the battery had lost two bars of power and that was after a full charge. Annoyingly this battery life bar tended to jump up and down when adjusting settings or changing shooting modes, so it was never that easy to work out how much juice was actually left.

There also seemed to be a problem with Auto White Balance. Even in bright sunny conditions, shots were left looking very cold with an obvious cyan colour cast, which is especially unusual from Sony. Something like this is fixable in image editing software, but it's a task you shouldn't have to contend with. Highlights also tended to suffer from blow out in Auto mode meaning that finer details were completely lost; this seemed very bizarre on some occasions, especially as the overall shot looked a little underexposed.

If that wasn't enough, the position of the lens at the extreme top right as you face the camera meant that it was all too easy for a forefinger to feature in the shot. As the camera body is so slim it was difficult to hold the camera steady without grasping around the lens area, something that would have been easy to get around if the lens was more traditionally centred.

The Sony DSC T500 is a frustrating camera. On the one hand it's wonderful to look at and to show off, but there are, unfortunately, some negatives too. Touchscreen operation makes it a modern and refreshing compact to operate and its HD movie capabilities make it a good creative all-rounder. However, with so much emphasis placed on its design some real problems spring up when it comes to image quality. Colour cast is a real issue in auto mode and as for battery life; well, it's one thing to bag yourself this stunning camera but if you run out of battery after just a few shots, then it's not going to be in the limelight for long.