Review: Panasonic Lumix FX55 — Anything But Illuminated

Review: Panasonic Lumix FX55 — Anything But Illuminated: "

(Photo by Jackson Lynch)

Built around a lens forged in the vaunted house of Leica, the FX55 is packed with a laundry list of features: an ultra wide zoom with twin mode optical image stabilization, three aspect ratios, and a three-inch LCD. Sweet specs, right? Yup, they are. This palm-sized, lustrously silver shooter holds so much promise that when we actually used it in the wild, the results were a tad shocking. You see, an impressive resume of features and gorgeous form factor doesn’t necessarily translate into a great shooter. I spent 10 days futzing with the FX55 at family gatherings, school functions, petting zoos, and a very fancy wedding searching for the ‘intuitive’ part of the user experience. You know what? There isn’t one. The enormous LCD showcases jerky motion and some very confusing menus. And picture quality? We’ve seen smaller cameras (like the ELPH) do it a lot better.' —Jackson Lynch

WIRED Beautiful industrial design with superior Leica optics. Shoots in 3:2, 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios. Sharp QuickTime videos.

TIRED Menus are unnecessarily murky. Key functions like exposure compensation, flash adjustment, and delete require deep menu digging rather than direct access. The function dial makes mode changes slower than a tortoise full of rigor mortis.

$350, panasonic.com

(Via Gadget Lab.)