Product Reviews

The EX-Z1080 isn't brimming with remarkable specifications, but it's this kind of camera that often turns out to be excellent value. It's a little chunkier than the Casio EX-S880 (reviewed in Shopper 242) but it has a bigger battery, a 10-megapixel sensor and is still highly compact.

The controls and menu are almost identical to the EX-S880's. There's the same collection of fun features such as face detection that shows favouritism for predefined faces, plus a daft Quick Shutter option that takes photos without focusing. Its USB port is of the slower Full Speed type, which transfers

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at just 0.89MB/s, so it's worth buying a card reader. Shooting performance is up to scratch at just over two seconds between shots. The 0.85fps continuous mode is disappointing, but a High Speed option takes 2-megapixel shots at 2.7fps.

We were impressed by the detailed skin textures shot in bright light at close range, with every pore, blotch and wrinkle captured with unnerving precision. However, shots of more distant subjects were rarely as sharp, particularly at the edges of photos. Colours were vibrant, but face detection failed to produce pleasing exposures when shooting against a dark or bright background.

Noise levels are the hardest challenge for a camera with so many megapixels, but the EX-Z1080 performed admirably, with smooth results at ISO 400 and a usable ISO 800 setting. Noise was more of a problem when shooting video in low light, as the H.264 format struggled to compress the noisy frames. Otherwise, video capture was superb, with a generous 848x480 widescreen resolution, smooth auto-exposure, a working optical zoom and high-quality audio.

The Z1080 doesn't quite equal Samsung's NV8 for image quality or performance, but it's close.