 I'm David with The Verge and this is the Sony RX10. It's hard to describe what this camera is. On one hand, it's a lot like a DSLR. It looks like one, with a big grip, a big lens, and a viewfinder. At $1,299, it's priced like one too. But it doesn't have interchangeable lenses or a big sensor or dials and buttons everywhere. But it doesn't matter. It's fantastic. It has a Carl Zeiss lens with a 24-200mm equivalent zoom at a bright f2.8 the whole way. I've never seen a lens quite like this, and it's well suited to shooting everything from portraits to sports. The only trouble it ever caused me was trying to quickly zoom in and out. Since it's all done electronically, it's a little slow to shift, even if you use the manual zoom ring. But it has really solid macro performance, it's sharp across the entire image, and it allows for a really spectacular range of shots. It's become my go-to camera for lending people who don't know anything about photography. The RX10 almost never takes a bad picture. It occasionally overexposes shots, but it has beautiful colors, accurate lighting and layering, and produces genuinely gorgeous photos nearly every time. Its ability to take shots in low light, with soft backgrounds, and with high dynamic range is completely unlike any point-and-shoot I've ever used other than Sony's own RX100, which actually has the same 1-inch 20.2 megapixel sensor as the RX10. It's able to shoot comfortably up to ISO 3200, and even higher if you're putting your photos on Facebook and not a billboard. There's some software noise reduction happening here, and I wound up with some really soft photos in really terrible light, but the fast BIONZ X processor mostly helps a lot. I had to work hard to find a shot the RX10 couldn't handle. Its autofocus is its only real problem. Most of the time it's really fast, but it often hunts too much, or just completely guesses wrong and takes a blurry shot. It's especially bad when it's fully zoomed in, and it did cost me a few great pictures, but luckily only a few. I should say that the RX10 is really not comparable to even a mid-range DSLR. The cheaper Canon T5i with the right lens will take sharper pictures and do better in low light, and a camera like that gives you so much more room to grow into photography as well. This camera is what it is, but for some people that's a good thing. For people who want that, the size of the RX10 is going to be its only real drawback. The weatherized, leathery, magnesium body weighs almost two pounds, and it's almost six inches thick with the huge lens retracted. This camera's not fitting in your pocket, that's what the RX100 is for. But what you get in return is that huge zoom range and enough manual control that you can definitely make the RX10 do exactly what you want. There's a three inch LCD on the back, which tilts up or down and lets you shoot from either above your head or below your waist, an electronic viewfinder with all the same advantages, you can see lots of information without taking your eye away, and disadvantages, it's just not as accurate as an optical viewfinder as any other. But I'm coming around to EVFs, and Sony's really is one of the best. There's also a dedicated button for recording video, which you can do with one tap from anywhere on the camera. Video looks great and sounds great too, though it does take a slightly finer touch. You can shoot 1080p up to 60 frames per second, and everything is clear and sharp, but the camera's noise cancellation and image stabilization can both be kind of rough. The zoom is super smooth, though, and does a nice job of keeping focus as you go. There are little nods to convenience everywhere. Sony knows exactly who's gonna buy this camera. The RX10 charges via micro USB and does so a little slower than I'd like, but it means you'll never have trouble finding a charging cable for the camera. There's a built-in flash, an easily accessible SD card slot, and a standard hot shoe. Even the interface is simple, burying all but the most common settings where they can't possibly hurt you. It turns on in less than three seconds, has almost no shutter lag, and shoots about two shots per second in standard mode. Many of the people upgrading to the RX10 will be coming from cell phone cameras, so Sony built WiFi and NFC into the camera itself. You can control the shutter, share pictures, and change settings right from your phone. That's nice, but the implementation here is rough. Sony's PlayMemories app is ugly and overly simple, and it just doesn't work that well. But that doesn't really matter, because everything else about the RX10 works so well. It takes great pictures, whether you're insanely close up or incredibly far away. It takes great video, too, and it does it all without you needing to do much of anything except point and shoot. The really killer thing is that it's so expensive. At $1,299, it's really only going to work for photographers looking for a versatile second camera, or people who don't know or want to know anything about photography but have some money to burn. But Sony knows that most people who buy DSLRs never take off the kit lens, and many of those people would be much happier with an RX10. And while point and shoot cameras may deserve to be dying, cameras like the RX10, versatile shooters that take great pictures in auto and even better with some effort, might just be the future.