At a consumer-focused event yesterday, HP gave us a sneak peek at their newest Photosmart cameras, including the Photosmart R937. The R937 stands out with its huge, 3.6-inch screen, which HP claims is the largest screen on a digital camera. The extra room helped while viewing photos, but also allowed for larger icons, which is nice because the camera uses a touch screen interface. Playing with the camera, we found the screen to be nice and sharp, and the touch screen was perfectly responsive. Though we had no problems pecking at it with our fingers, HP also includes a guitar-pick-sized stylus that dangled from the end of the wrist strap.
The R937 comes with the slew of features common on the better compact digital cameras these days, including panorama stitching, anti-shake technology, red-eye removal and plenty of options to crop and edit your pics. Unfortunately, the anti-shake feature is not hardware-based, it simply improves the image by increasing sensitivity and tweaking the resulting shot. HP also has some unique features, though, in their pet-eye reduction, for which they had a dog present at the launch event to demonstrate, and a tagging feature. Tagging allows you to type keywords into the camera, using an on-screen, touch sensitive keyboard. These tags are recognized by Windows Vista and Apple's iPhoto. We use tagging often to organize photos, so being able to tag photos in the field intrigued us. In practice, we were happy with the responsiveness of the touch keyboard, and we'd like to spend more time with the camera to see if this feature is as quick and useful as it could be.
The camera comes equipped with a 3X optical zoom and an 8-megapixel sensor. The design places the lens in the center of the arching face. The display is large enough that users with small hands may want to hold on with both, but hardware buttons, like the shutter release, are kept simple, and within reach. The tripod mount is way off-center, which doesn't make sense on a camera with panorama-stitching built in. Otherwise, we definitely liked the touch menu interface, which was modern-looking and easy to read. Perhaps this represents a step away from the megapixel war that manufacturers have been fighting, and a step towards the display size battle. We'd definitely take a larger display and a good interface over a few million pixels, any day.
Look for our complete review of the HP Photosmart R937 as soon as we can get our hands on one for more than a few minutes. We'll have more to say about image quality and battery life then. The R937 will be available in August for $300.
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