Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 compact camera

Name: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 compact camera
Item: Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 compact camera
Rating: 3.50
Author: Elias Plastiras

Panasonic's Travel Zoom camera, the Lumix DMC-TZ60, offers a 30x optical zoom lens in a package that can easily fit in your pocket

Elias Plastiras

PC World

@pcworldau

21/03/14

Expert Rating

3.50 / 5

Pros

Small size
30x optical zoom
Versatile usage scenarios

Cons

Image quality can vary depending on zoom level
Wi-Fi implementation isn't great
Charging is via cable rather than a dedicated battery charger

Bottom Line

Panasonic's latest Travel Zoom camera, the TZ60, offers a massive optical zoom of 30x in a body that can easily slip into a pants pocket. It's small camera with lots of versatility and it ticks almost all the boxes requires of a travel camera. Its image quality is a little soft overall, but more than decent for sharing on the Internet or viewing on a big-screen TV.

Would you buy this?

Price
$ 549.00 (AUD)

Other features

You get the usual scene modes, art modes, sweeping panorama, and there are also custom modes that you can create based on regularly used settings. A better-than-usual-for-a-compact-camera manual focus mode is present in the Lumix TZ60 — you can move the ring at the front of the camera to focus, and parts of the image will be highlighted on the screen to let you know what’s exactly in focus.

Other features include Full HD video capture, built-in GPS so that your photos can be tagged, and Wi-Fi, so that they can be transferred to a smartphone for uploading to the Internet while you’re on the go. The Wi-Fi wasn’t great during our tests. It was difficult to connect to a wireless access point using a password because we couldn’t key in double letters properly, and when we eventually did connect, the Panasonic Image App wasn’t reliable. We had success when we performed a direct connection from our phone to the camera, scanning a QR code from the camera’s LCD screen to make the connection. This allowed us to select photos from the camera to transfer them to the phone, but, again, the app crashed soon after. Basically, the Wi-Fi implementation on this Lumix needs a little refining if it’s to offer a smooth user experience.

Conclusion

Many of you may roll your eyes at the $549 price tag of this compact camera if you already have an expensive smartphone capable of taking photos that are still very good for most occasions. But if you want a camera that gives you more creative control than a phone, and also the ability to shoot macros and to zoom in on faraway objects, then it’s a camera worth serious consideration. Furthermore, it’s small and easy to carry around, while offering the capabilities of a much larger camera.