How does “sweep panorama” compare to traditional montage?

Question

Newer Sony cameras offer "sweep panorama" mode where you just pan the camera and it stitches the panorama picture in the camera. This function is starting to appear in models from other manufacturers too (can't find the relevant link at the moment).

Apart from the obvious limitation to one picture height/width (one cannot create 2xN or Nx2 panorama in this mode) - can anybody tell how sweep panoramas compare to traditional panorama montage? Is the result comparable/better/much worse?

Answer

I tried a model like this in the store, both horizontally and vertically. I was not satisfied with the quality. The particular model that I tried used seemed to be using the HD video imaging pipeline to do its stuff. Also, when used vertically, it required you to change the orientation of the camera by 90deg. In the end, the small dimension on the pano was always 1080. You can do way better than that with stitching with a hand held p&s that has man exp and focus.

So my advice is try before you buy.

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