HP Photosmart R727 Review at DC Resource

Updated - Wednesday, 31st May 2006

DC Resource had finished their review of the 6 megapixel HP Photosmart R727 and thinks the design folks at HP should have spent a little more time on image quality -

Camera performance was very good. The R727 starts up quickly, focuses without much of a wait, and shot-to-shot delays are minimal (usually). There’s a bit of shutter lag when shutter speeds are slow, and I wasn’t thrilled with the low light focusing ability of the camera, either. The continuous shooting mode fires off four photos at 2.4 frames/second, but the LCD is dark the entire time, making it hard to track a moving subject. Battery life was above average.

What I liked: * Compact, stylish metal body * Large, sharp 2.5″ LCD display; good low light visibility * Very good performance in most areas * Adaptive Lighting feature brightens up dark areas of your photos (though noise levels go up even more) * Tons of useful features: effective in-camera redeye removal (that really works), panorama stitching, image undelete, Image Advice, and more * Nice movie mode; zoom can be used during filming (though the sound will be picked up) * Very easy to use; elaborate in-camera help system * Photosmart Express feature lets you easily “tag” photos for sharing

What I didn’t care for: * Noisy images; soft, smudged details; some purple fringing * Low light focusing not great for a camera with an AF-assist lamp * Lots of button-mashing to get to commonly used settings buried in menu * Current zoom position not shown on LCD * LCD blackout during continuous shooting * More manual controls would’ve been nice * Camera always uses default settings when turned on (though note workaround in conclusion) * No optical viewfinder * Video output requires $80 dock purchase * No USB 2.0 High Speed support * Plastic tripod mount, hidden movie mode button * Shared photos not directly e-mailed to recipient * Full manual on CD-ROM