The L610 looks to compete directly with Canon's SX150, both of which run on AA batteries and sport a decent zoom range. The L610's 14x optical zoom isn't much compared to the 20x zooms found on higher end compact zoom models, or indeed its bulkier L810 and L120 siblings, but it's enough for most things and better than the 12x zoom on the SX150. The use of AA's does make the camera larger than your average compact, but it's still quite small and many are partial to the ubiquitous alkalines. Image quality remains an unknown, but expect decent low-light performance due to the CMOS sensor. At $249 the L610 looks to be a great addition to the Nikon lineup.