When I’m not hanging out on street corners and harassing old couples, or doing any of those other things that teenagers like myself inevitably do, I can often be found hiring myself out as an amateur wedding photographer. Exchanging my hoody and bandana for a top notch digital camera, it is my job capture those special moments for family and friends. It was in this highly privileged capacity that I recently discovered my love for the new EX-Z1200, Casio’s self-styled flagship digital camera. Purporting to be, at 12.1 megapixels, a model of unparalleled quality, this charming little device quite simply exceeded all of my expectations.

Aesthetics

The camera has a neat, black finish on its front side, with the flash and the lens clearly visible but not imposing. On the back, the EX-Z1200 boasts a superb 2.8 inch colour LCD display, with just a few buttons scattered to its right side to allow the user to navigate the menu. The impressive display makes the back of the camera appear suitably stylish, and, as is increasingly the case with new digital cameras, the lack of buttons eliminates any impression of clutter. On the whole, the EX-Z1200 is carefully and intelligently designed, with a smart aesthetic quality, making for an attractive camera.

It is clear that Casio take enormous pride in their flagship model, and they have good reason to. The EX-Z1200 is selling itself on quality – pure, unadulterated quality – and Casio has clearly put a tremendous amount of effort into this aspect of the camera. At an astonishing 12.1 megapixels, the EX-Z1200 has set a benchmark for quality in this price range, producing images of a breathtaking standard that remain at a high resolution even when significantly enlarged, helping considerably with my new poster range.

The quality of movies on the EX-Z1200 is inevitably limited by the 11.4MB internal flash memory (though additional memory cards can be added by the user). While this is plenty of room to store photographs, it is not enough to store long, high quality movie clips, and thus the length and the quality of movies suffer equally. However, this is not the camera’s prime function, and if you want to focus on recording movies, a video-camera, rather than any sort of digital camera, is your best bet.

The EX-Z1200’s primary function is, of course, to take photographs. Indeed, as we have established, it excels at this task. However, there is more to this charming device than meets the eye. It can also serve as a voice recorder, allowing the user to add voice-overs to their photographs. There are always cynics out there who would dismiss this sort of thing as nothing more than a gimmick, and I would venture to wholeheartedly agree with them, but it could undoubtedly become a useful function for many.

All of this makes for an impressive diversity of features, enabling the user to get the picture they want. And the EX-Z1200’s features are not just limited to taking photographs, they are also in evidence upon playback, with a high speed image playback feature, enabling the user to view a hundred images in ten seconds. I did of course give this a go, unfortunately finding it a little pointless, given that by the time I had a chance to look at one, the camera had moved onto the image five images after the one I had been looking at. That said, when slowed down a little, the feature was a breath of fresh air after being used to the traditional irritating two second pause between each photograph that seems to persist on most other cameras.

The EX-Z1200 allows for easy upload of movies and images onto the computer via its included USB cable. Editing can then be performed using the software of your choice. Playback of movies is available on the camera itself via its LCD display, as well as on the computer, allowing the user to assess their movies on screen before deciding to upload them and use up that valuable memory space. The camera does the basic things here, and does them sufficiently well to make the process a simple and easy one, which is what the vast majority of users are after.

Casio have made the impressive battery-life of the EX-Z1200 one of its unique selling points, using their new ‘super-life’ lithium-ion rechargeable battery, which provides a significant boost to the camera’s battery-life. Even with intensive use, the battery will last for several hours, and the standard use of a camera would probably only require a fresh charge every few days. However, it is, as ever, nearly impossible to give an accurate prediction of battery length, given that it will fluctuate according to how the device is used. If you only wish to take the occasional picture, you can expect charging to be relatively infrequent, but if you wish to maximise your use of the EX-Z1200’s movie function, for example, you can expect to have to charge it much more often. As ever, the rechargeable Lithium-ion battery will self-discharge over time, probably by about 5% per month if charged sensibly, and will probably last for about 30 months.

The Casio EX-Z1200 is a camera designed for the individual with, like myself, the perfect mixture of both style and substance. It’s not that I’m unhappy with my own camera, but I must confess to being rather jealous of its parental owner. It was clear from the start, when I first started using this model, that it provides the utmost in quality, while also displaying an impressive range of features, a fantastic battery life, and a good variety of different functions as well. The price may make some think twice, and there are probably flashier models out there as well, but for outstanding quality, this is the perfect option.

Width: 9.3 cm
Depth: 2.2 cm
Height: 5.9 cm

Weight: 152g

Internal Memory: 11.4MB

Digital Zoom: 4x