This is an almost excellent camera. What makes it fall short is much higher than average image noise and overly high contrast. While noise may not appear disturbing in small prints, the high contrast will. Other than that, the Panasonic DMC-LX1 is quite full featured and well built. It also has several features very rarely found in compact cameras: optical image stabilization, a wide-angle lens, manual focus and a wide-aspect sensor.

The wide-aspect sensor is a perfect match for HDTV screens or widescreen LCD monitors which have a 16:9 aspect ratio. On such displays, images from the LX1 will neither require cropping nor require letter-boxing. The same is true for movies recorded in wide-aspect at 848x480 resolution. While this camera supports multiple aspect ratio images (16:9, 4:3 and 3:2), its important to note that the field of view changes between aspect ratios. This means that the lens has a 28mm equivalent wide-angle only in 16:9 mode. In 4:3 mode, the lens at wide-angle is roughly equivalent to 34mm.

Overall, this camera's unique aspects will suits users who prefer wide-aspect images and can overlook this camera's image quality issues. Another camera capable of wide-screen pictures is the 6 megapixels Fuji Finepix F810 which shows better image quality. If wide-screen images are not important, the much cheaper Canon Powershot A620 would be preferable.