HP Photosmart R927 review

Performance
Unfortunately, the HP Photosmart R927 is a sluggish performer under all but optimal conditions. It has an extremely short shutter lag of 0.2 seconds for brightly lit, high-contrast scenes -- that jumps to 1.8 seconds when things aren't so bright. Time from power-on to the first shot was a middling 2.5 seconds, and the camera took 2.8 seconds between shots without flash thereafter. With flash, the shot-to-shot time rose to 3.4 seconds. Also, the burst mode was erratic, capturing anywhere from 1 to 3 images in a burst in our tests at a rate of 2.3fps regardless of image size. The LCD, which initially impressed us with its size, is severely washed out in sunlight. Also, when magnifying images on the LCD, they were noticeably pixelated even when zoomed only slightly, though this probably was not the fault of the LCD.

Image quality
The image quality is not what we'd expect for a camera in its price range. To its credit, the R927 makes excellent exposure decisions, and colours are warm and bright. The lens shows little to no vignetting, but we see severe purple and green fringing around specular highlights as well as high-contrast edges such as white lettering on dark signs or just about anything with the bright sky in the background. Noise levels are not bad. At ISO 100, there is very little noise, aside from some discoloured pixels in darker colours. At ISO 200 and ISO 400, noise is more noticeable but still acceptable, especially for a casual shooter model. We also noticed jaggies in some diagonal lines, while wide-angle shots exhibited significant barrel distortion, in which straight lines near the edges bend outward.

If, for some reason, you're not bothered by the Photosmart R927's image quality or performance issues, its ease of use, its extensive help menus, and its manual exposure controls make it a great camera with which to learn the basics of photography. But if you already know a thing or two and don't need such extensive help functions, you'd probably be better off with a camera with superior image quality, such as Casio's Exilim EX-Z850.

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-W50

1.5 

1.6 

0.3 

HP Photosmart R927

2.8 

2.5 

0.3 

Canon PowerShot SD630

1.9 

1.4 

0.5 

Casio Exilim EX-Z850

2.7 

2.1 

0.5 

Canon PowerShot A620

1.8 

1.9 

0.7