Solid performance, and a few nice tricks

Author's Rating:

Pros: Respectable image quality
8x optical zoom
25mm wide angle lens
Solid construction
Good price

Cons: Sound playback quality
Somewhat blurry in low-light conditions
Battery life could be better

The Bottom Line: 
An inexpensive compact camera with good photo quality; the solid basics and added perks make it a truly excellent "throw in the backpack" camera.

Author's Review
For a compact camera at this price range, the DMC-ZR1 can't be beat.  It's small enough to fit in a pocket (as long as you're not wearing skinny jeans) but it takes good, solid photos and has a nice variety of features that place it just slightly ahead of its competition.

First, the most important thing in a camera--photo quality.  Naturally, a compact camera is probably not going to be your go-to choice for professional quality pictures, but for what it is the ZR1 performs very well.  Of particular note to me is the quality of the image stabilization--always important for those spur-of-the-moment shots--the speed and intelligence of the autofocus, and the optical zoom and lens angle.  The little camera has an 8x optical zoom, which is really quite spectacular, and a 25 mm wide angle lens, also really nice.  Between these two things, a close-up of your kid at the school performance and taking a photo of beautiful landscape are both easily doable.  Minimal bending at the edges of the wide-angle shots, too. 

The standard compact complaints, as always, apply: noise at high ISOs, a shutter speed that's not quite fast enough, a disturbing relunctance to let users meddle with their own photo settings outside of some very basic functions. 

There are 4 main modes to the camera, ranging from a full automatic to an "intelligent" automatic (I guess this means I can set my own white balance and exposure time?) to some interesting "scene" modes.  This include the standard roll call--landscape, portrait, action, night, etc.--but also a few interesting arty options, including "high dynamic," which is designed for image situations with naturally high contrast. 

The video quality is decent, certainly good enough for You-tube clips of your cats biting each other, though I doubt any new Sundance entrants will be filmed with it.  Sound is recorded well enough, but one annoying thing is that playback is terrible--the top volume is still very, very soft.

The body of the camera looks quite nice, a little bit retro.  There's a good grip on the right side, and it's blocky without being bulky.  I like an on/off switch instead of a button, but the placement of the mode dial is irritating, since my finger wants the shutter button to be there instead; adjusting to placing it a centimeter to the left was easy enough though.  The internal menus are not exactly intuitive, either, though they can be parsed eventually, with some fiddling and figuring.  The LCD is bright and shiny, though like many cameras this size it lacks an optical viewfinder, which might be nice on sunny days.  No HDMI out, which doesn't annoy me but which might bother other people.

Overall, I love this camera!  I mean, I've had better ones, but this one delivers really solid performance, some nice little bonuses, and I can bang it around in my jeans pocket without wincing in fear when I bump into a doorframe.