Casio EX-Z850 Review

With sharp lines and an optical viewfinder window just above its lens, the Casio EXILIM EX-Z850 looks more traditionally "camera-like" and functional than many competing models these days, while still managing to be reasonably attractive. The Casio Z850 fits a larger than average 2.5" LCD display with a resolution of 115,200 pixels into its compact body, and the aforemention optical viewfinder means there's a way to save battery power, so long as accurate framing isn't necessary - just turn off the power-hungry LCD and look through the viewfinder instead!

Images on the Casio EX-Z850 are captured with the combination of a high resolution 1/1.8" eight megapixel CCD imager, and a 3x optical zoom lens that provides a fairly standard 35mm-equivalent focal range of 38 - 114mm. Other features include the ability to manually control shutter speed, aperture, or both variables at the same time, 8MB of built-in storage memory, SD / MMC storage slot, NTSC / PAL video and USB 2.0 High Speed data connectivity (rather faster than the USB 2.0 Full-Speed / USB 1.1 connections still offered on some cameras), as well as a built-in flash and a macro mode that allows focusing as close as 10 centimeters. Power comed courtesy of a proprietary Lithium Ion rechargeable battery. The silver-bodied Casio EXILIM EX-Z850 goes on sale from mid April 2006, with a list price of $400.