HP Photosmart 620
HP's Photosmart 620 is a solid digital camera that's had an equally solid price drop since we initially reviewed it back in September last year. It's a solid contender in the pack of digital cameras we've reviewed here, but ongoing battery issues and a price that's still a touch high keep it just clear of the awards pack.
Like much of HP's digital imaging technology, the PhotoSmart 620 is controlled via HP's Director application, and it's that that you must install prior to setting up the PhotoSmart 620. Like Kodak's very similar EasyShare software, the accent is on photo printing more than on real photo manipulation; we'd recommend a package along the lines of Photoshop Elements for anyone looking to do some proper photo manipulation. Still, if all you want is to lay out some photos on an A4 sheet, Director does a good job.
From a technical perspective, the PhotoSmart 620 is similar to the cheaper PhotoSmart 320; it's also a 2.1 megapixel camera with only 8MB of onboard memory that runs off AA batteries. If you want to use approved rechargeables, you'll need to lay out an additional AU$179 for the HP Photosmart Camera dock. Given that the Photosmart 620 runs off a whopping four AA batteries, that may not be a bad step; the price of going through AA batteries is likely to rise quickly the more you use this particular camera.
The factor that sets the 620 apart from the 320 is the 3x optical zoom. The Photosmart 620 is one of only two cameras we tested to have any kind of optical zoom. There's also an additional 4x digital zoom, although as with every other camera, we'd skip that in favour of post-production zooming in most cases. Zoomed shots with the Photosmart 620 looked good, although as we noted in our original review, we tended to get better outdoor shots with the camera than indoor ones.
Photos taken with the Photosmart 620 were generally very good, with outdoor shots performing the most admirably. The flash is quite bright and tended to overexpose some indoor shots in our testing.
The PhotoSmart 620 is certainly a more compelling camera at its new lower price than it originally was, but a few minor factors do nudge it just out of the winner's podium. The somewhat limited and unituitive controls make it a little tougher to learn, the use of four AA batteries raise our hackles over the longer-term cost of the camera, and it's also the most expensive camera in our roundup at AU$449. That's a good saving from its launch price, but does fail to make it a compelling option given the lower priced competition in the budget digital camera space.
HP PhotoSmart 620
Company: HP Australia
Price: AU$449
Distributor: Selected Resellers
Phone: 13 23 47
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I have just seen an advertisement for the CX4230 in a pop up when I went to the Korean Herald newspaper at http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/index.asp . It was selling there for 185000 Won which equals AU$204, half what we would pay for it. I wonder why we can't get it at that price here?