CASIO'S NEW EXILIM EX-V7 IS ONE OF THE first 7X optical, 7.2-megapixel ultra compacts with image stabilization, to hit the market. The introduction of this advanced and stylish camera proves Casio has plenty of game, especially in the point-and-shoot space. Even better, the EX-V7 has a nice design, reminiscent of some of Sony's striking compacts. For one, it's pricey. The EX-V7 uses a lens with a powerful 7X optical zoom-possessing a zoom range of 6.3mm to 44.lmm (which is equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 38mm to 266mm zoom) with f-stops of f/3.4 to f/5.3. But I'd like to see more at the wide-angle end of the range. Last, I'm not crazy about the vertically oriented zoom control, because my finger kept slipping off it.

The EX-V77 uses H.264 MPEG-4 encoding (.MOV files), which gives you very good quality and lets you store more video on your memory card than with older video formats. The EX-V7 has a ton of scene modes, some of them practical ones, such as the business-card mode, which automatically straightens card photos if they're taken at an angle.(make sure the background is white.)

Interestingly, the Exilim boasts a couple of AF tracking features, something I haven't really seen on point-and-shoot models. One tracks your subject within a frame and then takes a shot so that it always centers your subject within that frame. Another option tracks your subject so that it's always in focus, whether it's in the center of the frame or in the corner. Unfortunately, this feature didn't follow subjects as closely as I'd like. The LCD is a nice 2.5 inches one, but it solarizes rather quickly when held at an angle. And with no glass viewfinder, the camera may be difficult to use on bright, sunny days, when the sunlight washes out the display.

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The camera's resolution averaged 1,625 lines, which is very sharp for a 7.2MP camera. It took just 2 seconds to boot up and to recycle from one shot to the next, which are very good times. The image stabilization worked well enough in bright light and especially well in low light, keeping pictures from being blurry. Although the Casio Exilim EX-V7 has a lens that doesn't thrill me and is more expensive than it should be, and it has a boatload of cool features and swift performance. All in all, it's a pretty compelling ultracompact.