Sony has done a good job of packaging a top quality camera into such a compact size. While it's not the smallest of the Sony range, it'll appeal to those who don't want anything too bulky.
Like its bigger brothers it uses a touch screen navigation system that saves real estate on the body of the camera and literally puts many of the functions at your fingertips.
The 101E has a 1.0-megapixel CCD, which ensures a quality image in most circumstances, however, there was some blurring with fast moving objects when using the optical zoom.
The 10x optical zoom works nicely in most circumstances and is better than many of its competitors when zooming in on stationary objects. However, the positioning of the built-in microphone on top of the unit can result in high wind noise.
Night mode can be used to highlight subjects even in total darkness as long as you don't mind greenish infrared images; and still images are saved to Sony's Memory Stick in JPEG format at a resolution of up to 1,152 x 864.
However, the photo button is badly positioned and can make taking photos a little tricky at times.
The LCD is difficult to see in sunlight, even when backlit, but that seems to be a universal problem across many of the cameras tested.
The instruction manual comes in two different languages, and as it is 300 pages long, things can sometimes get confusing.
However, overall the 101E is a classy little camera that does everything asked of it.