Casio Exilim EX Z850 Review

Overall Rating

Fantastic battery life (400+ shots).
8 mega-pixel.
Small and light.
Lots of instant 'best shot' options for ease of setting up all sorts of shots.
Brilliant and big LCD screen that is easily visible, even in strong sunlight.

No on-board way of transferring pictures. Everything is done via a docking station.

The worst and most useless manual I have ever seen.

I had a Fuji 1.5 mega-pixel digital camera before the Casio Exilim EX-Z850. It was awful. It broke half a dozen times, and was totally unreliable. Worst of all, I was lucky if I could take 40 shots before the battery was totally flat. So, I wanted a camera that had a good battery life. This is most definitely it. The battery life is staggering. It claims 400+ shots and I believe it. I took about 100 and the battery indicator was still showing a full charge. Brilliant! The photo quality is excellent. Unlike my 1.5 mega-pixel camera, I can now print pictures at full A4 size with absolutely no loss of picture quality. You can also zoom in to a picture you have taken and grab a particular bit as a new picture. Because of the 8 mega-pixel resolution you lose no detail at all when you do that. I took a picture of a snail, which took up about one twentieth of the screen. I then zoomed in to the picture until the snail took up the entire screen. It was amazing. I could see it's eyes! I then pressed a button and had a new close up picture. This is great for tidying up shots if they are off centre, or you have too much background or you want a close up of something.

There are about 30 'best shot' options available (plus one you can set up and store yourself) on a menu that is selected by simply pressing a single button. These are incredibly useful. They include, night shot, portrait, fireworks, scenery, black and white and candle light etc. There is even an eBay one (low resolution). This makes it all so much easier. No trying to work out shutter speeds, flash, or any of those other things that I find so baffling.

I am very pleased with this camera so far, and I would definitely recommend it. I've read reviews that the video quality is awful (it takes 10 minutes of video, memory permitting). It looks fine to me on the camera itself, but it is very blocky if viewed on TV. But, I couldn't care less really. If I'd wanted a video camera I'd have bought one.

Oh yes, finally, the manual. This is completely useless. Yes it tells you what the buttons do, but it doesn't explain anything about what options actually mean. What is 'screen auto 2, auto 1, +2 +1 or 0'? What is audio snap? What is MF position? Should the filter be on or off? .... filter what? Who knows? None of these things (and many more) are actually explained anywhere.