Casio's compact 10 megapixel EXILIM EX-Z1000 reviewed

Proving that there's still a little bit of life left in the so-called megapixel race, Casio is offering a compact digital camera that packs a 10 megapixel sensor into the smallest space we've seen since Samsung's latest ridiculously excessive cameraphone, and what's more, Let'sGoDigital finds that the company actually puts some of those extra pixels to good use. Besides its unrivaled maximum resolution of 3648 x 2736, Casio's EXILIM EX-Z1000 initially impressed us with a high res 2.5-inch display and unusual maximum ISO of 3200, but LGD finds that while the screen indeed delivers superior performance, the latter feature, as we suspected, produces unacceptable levels at noise. Images captured at ISOs below 400, however, were judged to be "impressive," with good color accuracy and visible detail, and there are plenty of options available to manually tweak such settings as white balance, flash intensity, and even aspect ratio for slideshows on either 4:3 or 16:9 TVs. The biggest downside to the Z1000 is probably its sub par 3x optical zoom, although this is one area where the camera's abundance of pixels helps to compensate somewhat, as Casio includes a "Non Deterioration Zoom" mode that lets you sacrifice image size for better-than-average digital zooming at settings as high as 17.1x. Overall, it sounds like your $400 buys you a well-built, full-featured, and solidly-performing camera -- with a very respectable 300+ shot battery life -- along with the dubious distinction of being the only person on your block to own a point-and-shoot sporting more megapixels than most people's DSLRs.

[phreaki @ May 21st 2006 12:38PM]

While I'm still happy with my Coolpix overall, I'm not happy however with the small screen. This type of huge LCD is surprising, given the long battery life.

[Mark @ May 21st 2006 1:01PM]

These Casio camera's definitely came out of nowhere. I have been really inpressed with their ease of use and picture quality. On that note....10 megapixels!?!!? Who the hell needs that much on a point and shoot digital? I guess consumers who think "more is better" will love this one.

[Pete @ May 21st 2006 2:14PM]

Wow! 10.1 mp!?!?! And around 400 not bad. I was thinking of buying the Sony cybershot with 8.1 mps. Idk should i go with Sony cybershot???

[rcc @ May 21st 2006 2:23PM]

Casio's cameras are nice. The camera is very small. I got a casio camera it works really good.

http://cheap-cameras-review.blogspot.com/2006/01/canon-s80-digital-camera-canons.html

[Weiran @ May 21st 2006 2:40PM]

I have a S-100, it's only 3MP but its still very very good. It's small enough to take anywhere, and has good enough picture quality to use as a main camera when I don't want to hunk around my SLR.

[MarkB @ May 21st 2006 3:10PM]

Sounds like a marketing gimick but the samples i've seen posted on the Japanese sites look very good and make of the most of the 10mp. I think this will turn out to be a good camera.

[Yago @ May 21st 2006 3:13PM]

I wonder why the EX-Z1000 captures video as AVI (Motion JPEG) while the EX-Z850 has MPEG-4. Wouldn't that be seen as a step back, assuming MPEG-4 offers smaller files for the same quality?

[Drew @ May 21st 2006 10:56PM]

Cramming more pixels into a camera like this is counterproductive. First off, the little lenses can't possibly resolve that much detail - even professional SLR lenses often can't resolve much more than 8mp.
Then, with a greater amount of pixels comes less light sensitivity for each pixel and greater noise.

[Dylan @ May 22nd 2006 4:25AM]

"...as we suspected, produces unacceptable levels at noise. Images captured at ISOs below 400, however..."

Holy funky grammer engadget, whats going on there?

It's mad to cram this much mp into a camera when chips cannot yet handle noise produced at these levels. Unfortunatly the average consumer is ignorant to why bigger doesn't neccesarily mean better, too many consumers are happy to hand over their cash for a model like this when they can buy a far better performing camera for the same money.

[wii @ May 22nd 2006 7:47AM]

Most likely EU release price of EXILIM EX-Z1000 will be a lot higher. do you know where to import this from?

[James @ Sep 25th 2006 11:37AM]

I bought one of these cameras in New York at Macy's department store for $319.00 in august. Back here in Dublin the same camera is about two hundred EUROS more! Maybe Macy's sells online or a friend can bring one back.

[Marc Mayor @ May 22nd 2006 2:32PM]

I love my "old" exilim; this 10 mpix is a killer.

[JDW @ Jun 24th 2006 3:24AM]

Have a look at this sample photo, taken by the EX-Z1000:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2006_reviews/ex-z1000/samples/cimg0060.jpg

The noise level was shocking to me. I love my Canon G5, which with only 5MP resolves as much useful information as this 10MP camera because the Canon has far lower noise (virtually none at ISO50).

I was pleasantly surprised to see this camera from Casio UNTIL I saw the noise. Buyer beware.

[Linda @ Sep 6th 2008 3:40PM]

What is noise? (sorry about the dumb question, but I really don't know what is meant by "noise", and since I am considering buying this camera, I have to ask)

[dalton @ Nov 11th 2007 8:19AM]

I do love the Casio Exilim cameras. I just bought a Z850. They're tiny, fast, well made, and take great pictures. It seems that every bump up in megapixels is a bump *down* in picture quality, though. The picture quality on the 8 megapixel Z850 is actually slightly less good than the Z750, the 7 megapixel camera it replaced. Everything else about the 850 is better, so I bought it anyway, but it is annoying.

My guess is that, even with more megapixels, the quality of the image is about the same as the other Exilim models. I wish they would take the super fast electronics and wonderful build of these cameras, and make a super slick, super high quality SIX megapixel camera. Now that would rock.