The good: Attractive, functional design; generally above average photo quality for its class; nice, useful feature set; lens can zoom during movie capture.

The bad: Aggressive smoothing reduces detail in indoor shots, even at low ISO sensitivities; modest performance; poorly placed microphone.

The bottom line: Though it's not perfect, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5's compact midrange megazoom feature set puts it in a class with just its sibling, the TZ4, and should deliver a satisfying shooting experience.

The Panasonic Lumix TZ5 has been a best seller for many months - and after reviewing this camera - it's easy to see why. The camera offers an excellent wide angle 10x optical zoom lens with image stabilisation, all in a relatively compact body that will fit in your pocket. Image quality is also excellent, and despite more noise than average, detail is very good. The camera provides an abundance of features, and has an impressive 3" screen. The camera features a very clever "Intelligent Auto" mode and makes using the camera easy, and fun, and provides an abundance of scene modes for beginners. For those looking for more creativity the camera features manual white balance, exposure bracketing, rapid continuous shooting, a histogram, and other image options. Add in an impressive widescreen HD video mode that lets you use the optical zoom whilst filming and you have a very impressive all-round package, all squeezed into a stylish, metal camera. Highly Recommended.

Over the week that I’ve been using the Panasonic TZ5 I have come to really like it, and will miss it when I have to give it back. It is a well designed and solidly made camera which is tough enough to survive quite a bit of rough treatment. It handles superbly, performs exceptionally well and is a genuine pleasure to use. Apart from its zoom range it’s a bit limited in terms of creative features, but has a good range of automatic functions that produce good quality pictures in almost any situation. It is quite expensive, but it is a product of real quality and as a general purpose snapshot camera it is hard to beat.