Outstanding Value

In the roughly 18 months I've had my Z1, I've had not one complaint about it...except for one picky little detail, but I'll get to that later. First, don't be put off by that 3.2 megapixel figure. I've found it to be more than sufficient for all my purposes, easily equal to all but the finest-grain 35mm film I've ever used. Unless you're hoping to be able to pick a face out of the crowd a mile away, you'll be just fine.

Mine came with a 64MB card, which is sufficient for most uses. However, I upgraded to 256MB which allows me to shoot up to around five minutes of full-motion video, and there are much larger cards available if I want to upgrade even further. It even contains a built-in microphone, which sounds about the way you'd expect. It ain't no 44BX, but what is? For decent audio, though, it's sufficient.

Optically, the 10X zoom is very effective. The Z1 also has a macro mode which is equal to any film camera I've ever used.

My one and only picky little complaint is that it won't take filters. It's never really been that big a deal, although once in a while it would be nice for getting that nearly indigo daylight sky.

In my opinion, this is one helluva camera for the money.