Konica Minolta Revio KD-400Z Digital Camera

WHAT'S HOT: Konica's Digital Revio KD-400Z boasts an attractive design that fits easily into a pocket. About the same size and weight as the Canon PowerShot S230--the de facto reference design for tiny cameras--the KD-400Z features a sturdy, well-designed stainless-steel body with a sliding cover that protects the lens. It earned high marks in our image-quality judging; all of its images looked sharp, thanks in part to its relatively high pixel count, with good depth of field and colors that looked bright and accurate.

If you support the lens with your middle finger, the KD-400Z is easy to hold and operate with one hand--not always the case with smaller cameras. The lens zooms swiftly, without blurring during its travel or overshooting, and it's quick to focus. The settings are simple to figure out and the controls are straightforward--you have only to deal with easily navigable on-screen menus and a few buttons. The KD-400Z doesn't even have a mode dial. To play back images, you press the Play button, which pops up images quickly; it's a nice touch for showing off pictures you've just taken. None of these traits is extraordinary on its own, but together they make for an easy-to-use camera.

WHAT'S NOT: This tiny camera has a tiny rechargeable battery, which powered the unit for only 177 shots in our tests--about half the average of cameras we've reviewed. A spare battery costs $50. While the KD-400Z takes great snapshots, it doesn't have sophisticated exposure controls; you can select from a few white-balance presets and tweak exposure compensation, but that's about it. You don't even get any scene modes. And though the lack of buttons makes the KD-400Z easy to use most of the time, you must go through the on-screen menu to choose movie mode or to change the resolution and quality settings. The menu button on our test model felt a bit mushy, too.

WHAT ELSE: The KD-400Z has both Secure Digital and Memory Stick slots. It ships with a 16MB SD Card, but you can use both media types at once (a setting lets you select which card the camera uses, or it will switch from one to the other when the first is filled). You can capture adequate AVI movies with sound, or store voice memos with your pictures (the camera has both a microphone and a speaker). Adobe Photoshop Elements, an excellent image editor, comes with the camera.

UPSHOT: You can rely on the KD-400Z to take good snapshots, with plenty of resolution for enlargements. More-advanced photographers will probably want more-sophisticated controls, though.