Overall, it's a joy to use, but a few drawbacks in its performance hold it back a bit: less-than-sharp images, poor overall video quality, and lackluster battery life. Nevertheless, the pros outweigh the cons, and we find a lot to like for the price.

The 12-megapixel Z800EXR is slim, at 0.8 inches thick, and pocket-size, at 3.9 inches wide and 2.3 inches tall. It weighs 5.6 ounces with the battery and SD/SDHC memory card loaded, making it both thinner and lighter (though not by much) than the . The is the only touchscreen camera we've seen that's slimmer.

It packs a 5X optical-zoom lens, which doesn't extend from the front of the camera when you zoom in; it's covered by a sliding faceplate when the camera is powered off. The 35mm-to-175mm zoom lens offers a maximum aperture value of F3.9 on the wide-angle end and 8.0 at full telephoto; we would have liked to see a bit of a wider-angle lens and aperture, but a 5X zoom is a good amount of optical versatility for a camera this skinny.

In design, the Z800EXR is fairly simple, with the only physical controls being a shoot/play mode toggle and a shutter button with a zoom control ring around it. And instead of a dedicated power button, you turn on the camera by either sliding the front panel that covers the lens down or pressing and holding the shoot/play mode toggle. On the side of the camera, a panel covers a mini-USB jack. The Z800EXR has no HDMI-out port, unlike both the Lumix DMC-FX75 and the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-TX9.