Casio Exilim EX-S200 Review

Just looking at the EX-S200, it's easy to tell that it's a Casio Exilim camera. It has the typical stylish look and extremely thin design that's common with Exilim models.

Unfortunately, the EX-S200's performance doesn't quite match its style. This camera has significant issues with shutter lag and shot to shot delays.

On the other hand, Casio has made up for some of these performance issues by adding some features that actually work pretty well, including strong flash performance and fun art effects. Make sure the S200's strengths meet your needs before you buy it, or you'll probably be very frustrated with it.

Image Quality

Image quality is hit and miss with the Exilim S200. Sometimes, the autofocus mechanism doesn't work quickly enough, leaving blurry photos. Outdoor photos are pretty good most of the time, but I'd like a little more consistency.

Indoor photos, however, are actually better than expected. The tiny, built-in flash with the S200 works pretty well, leaving images surprisingly well exposed. You'll still have a few poor flash photos, but the S200 works better with flash photos than most similarly priced cameras.

By making use of the camera's three dozen scene modes, you can help the S200 improve its image quality. The camera works OK in auto mode, but I think using scene modes yielded the best overall results.

Performance

If you're looking for a fast camera, the EX-S200 likely is not going to meet your needs. Shutter lag is a common problem with the S200, whether you're shooting indoors or outdoors.

Shot to shot delays are a serious problem for this camera, too, especially if you're shooting in what Casio calls "premium auto" mode. The S200 takes a few seconds to process any photo shot in "premium auto" mode -- displaying a "please wait" message on the LCD -- which becomes annoying very quickly. The in-camera processing in "premium auto" helps improve image quality occasionally, but I'm not sure the sacrifice in performance is worth it.

Chances are high that you'll miss quite a few spontaneous photos with this camera, waiting for it to respond, even when you're shooting outdoors and the lighting is good. The sluggish response times with the Exilim EX-S200 easily represent the most disappointing aspect of this camera.

Finally, Casio has included a large number of special-effect options inside the camera. You can use any of several colors to "tint" the image, or you can select from effects like "watercolor" or "crayon," for example. These features are fun to have "in camera." Although you can add these features later with image editing software with basically any camera, it's fun and saves time to just pick them from the S200's menu.

Design

As with most Exilim cameras, the S200 is a stylish, thin model, measuring only 0.7 inches in thickness. The camera body colors are fun, too.

For a low-priced camera, the S200's LCD is surprisingly bright. When using it in direct sunlight, glare on the screen was minimal and the LCD was pretty easy to see, using the maximum brightness setting.

I did not like the menu structure of the EX-S200. The camera has no dedicated menu button, meaning once you enter the menus, you cannot exit unless you make a selection. It just takes too long to make basic menu selections.

With its good low-light performance and stylish look, I'd say the S200 seems like the kind of camera that would be fun to take to a party to shoot photos of friends and to use the in-camera art effects. Shooting spontaneous photos of the kids or pets, though, wouldn't appear to be a strength of this camera because of the poor response times.