At 24mm thick and weighing 153g, the Casio Exilim EX-Z1050, available for around £130, isn't quite the slimmest member of the Casio Exilim series of digital cameras. It is, however, one of the simplest.
Design
Unlike most other Exilims, the EX-Z1050 lacks both mode dial and switch and holds only a few buttons on its back panel. This simple design betrays the camera's simple feature set. The 10-megapixel shooter uses a standard 38-114mm equivalent 3x zoom lens.
Like all Exilims, the EX-Z1050 features Casio's antishake DSP digital-image stabilisation and Best Shot scene preset modes. The EX-Z1050 also uses the same control sidebar first seen in the Casio Exilim EX-S770. The sidebar works well with the EX-Z1050's simple design, making almost all commonly used image settings available with a few taps of the direction pad.
Features
The EX-Z1050 sports a 66mm (2.6-inch), 115,000-pixel LCD screen. That's a far cry from the 230,000-pixel screens found on a lot of cameras these days.
The low resolution makes virtually everything you see through it look soft and grainy. Since the camera doesn't have a viewfinder, you're forced to deal with the disappointing LCD whenever you use it. This makes framing shots difficult, as the coarse, blurry display doesn't clearly show whether the camera has accurately focused.
Performance
Despite the bad display, the EX-Z1050 actually shoots pretty well. It performed admirably in our tests, with solid shooting speeds and strangely bittersweet burst mode speeds.
After taking 1.4 seconds to start up and capture its first image, the camera snapped shots every 1.9 seconds. With the flash enabled, that time increased to a still-tolerable 2.4 seconds. The EX-Z1050's shutter lagged only 0.5 seconds in bright light and 1.1 seconds in low light. At full resolution, the camera's burst mode took 0.9 shots per second -- respectable for a 10-megapixel camera.
Image quality
The camera's photos generally look very nice. Colours appear neutral and pictures stay relatively free of artefacts, save for some purple fringing on the edges of some lighter objects. The photos displayed little noise up to ISO 400, and even at ISO 800 noise remained a fine, fairly unobtrusive fuzz.
Conclusion
The Casio Exilim EX-Z1050, available for about £130, proves how just one flaw can almost ruin an otherwise fine camera. While it takes nice photos and works well, the blurry screen makes framing the simplest shots difficult. For a larger, much more legible screen with the same solid features and small size, consider instead the lower-resolution EX-S770.
Additional editing by Jon Squire
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