Kodak EasyShare Touch M5370

The Kodak EasyShare Touch M5370 ($159.95 direct) is a tough camera to peg. Its image quality is pretty good, but it doesn't do well in low light, and its performance is downright sluggish. The 16-megapixel pocket camera is one of the most affordable touch-based shooters on the market, but it's priced just a little too high to qualify as a budget camera. It's got a dedicated Easyshare button for quick, simple photo sharing, but its major selling point is a touch-screen interface which is, frankly, a hindrance to its usability. Our Editors' Choice mid-range compact camera, the Canon PowerShot Elph 310 HS ($259.99, 4 stars), while more expensive, rights a lot of what's wrong with the M5370.

Design and Features
Available in blue or silver, the 4.8-ounce M5370 is quite compact, measuring just 2.3 by 3.9 by 0.8 inches. This puts it in the same class as one of Canon's more pocketable shooters, the 2.2 by 3.7 by 0.8-inch, 4.8-ounce PowerShot Elph 100 HS ($199.99, 3.5 stars). The Kodak's 5x zoom lens covers a 28-140mm (35mm equivalent) field of view, which gives it a longer reach than the 100 HS, but if you're willing to give up the touch input you can opt for the 8x-equipped General Electric E1480W ($169.99, 3 stars) for just $10 more.

The camera's 3-inch LCD is its main rear feature and control interface. Despite the large size, the resolution is only 230,000 dots, which results in some fuzziness when reviewing and framing images. This is the same resolution found on the 2.7-inch screen our budget Editors' Choice, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 ($129.99, 4 stars). The lack of sharpness is compounded by the darkening of the top and bottom of the display, where the touch-based menu options reside. You can hide these options by tapping on the screen, which will provide you with an unobstructed view of your frame, however.

The touch screen itself is frustrating. It supports swiping left and right to scroll through menu options and images, but the response is rather slow. This can lead you to wonder if the screen has registered your input. Features that need to be activated quickly to be useful, such as exposure compensation, can only be activated by touch?which costs critical time when shooting. This won't be a big deal if you leave the camera in Automatic mode, but if you're the type who wants to control over your photography, the M5370 presents a less-than-optimal user experience. The interface on Sony's iteration of the touch camera, the Cyber-shot DSC-T110 ($219.99, 4 stars), provides a much nicer user experience.

One quirk I ran into when testing the camera was the color setting. When the camera is set to automatic mode, colors were bright and crisp. But changing it to Program Mode, which I used to test the camera, resulted in images that were dull and lacking color. It seems that, by default, the camera uses a Basic Color setting in Program Mode, as opposed to the more natural Full Color setting. Normal colors are a menu setting away, but without that knowledge you'll be confused as to why photos look dull and bleak once the camera is no longer set to auto.

You do get a few physical controls. There's an On/Off button, ashutter release, a zoom rocker, and a movie record button on the top of the camera, and the picture playback and Share button are located on the rear. Pressing the Share button brings up a thumbnail display of your photos, and you can select which ones you'd like to select for sharing via email and services like Twitter and Facebook. When you plug the camera into your computer, the EasyShare software automatically launches and shares your images.

Performance and Conclusions
No speed demon, the M5370 requires a full 4.6 seconds to start up and take a shot, requires you to wait 2.4 seconds between photos, and the shutter lag?the time between pressing the shutter and the camera taking the photo?is 0.6 second. ?To compare, the $170 GE 1480W was slower to recycle between shots, requiring 2.9 seconds to do so, but started up in 2.5 seconds and managed a 0.4-second shutter lag.

In terms of image sharpness, the camera did okay, recording 1,713 lines per picture height of resolution, just shy of the 1,800-line mark that denotes a sharp image in Imatest. The camera actually edged out the Canon PowerShot 100 HS here, which only managed 1,692 lines. Our Editors' Choice Canon 310 HS, a much more expensive camera, managed 1,857 lines. The M5370 doesn't excel in low light. The camera was able to keep image noise below 1.5 percent (the acceptability threshold) through ISO 400. It did manage to better the GE 1480W in this regard?that camera only performed well at ?ISO 100. The 100 HS does a better job here as well, keeping noise at acceptable levels through ISO 1600.

Even though the M5370 shoots video in 720p format, the quality is not that great. Details are a bit fuzzy, and the optical zoom is disabled during recording. There is a digital zoom available, but using it turns the footage into a fuzzy mess very quickly. Video is saved in MP4 format so you can upload it to the Web with ease. The camera doesn't have an HDMI port, so you'll need to deliver the video to your HDTV via some other means. Kodak opted to support only microSD and microSDHC memory cards in this camera, which are much smaller than standard SD cards, but also more expensive. Most laptops don't support these cards without the use of an adapter, so you may find yourself plugging the camera in via USB to offload photos. The M5370 does have a standard micro USB port for data transfer and battery charging. You'll need to charge the battery in the camera, as there is no dedicated charger included.

I found using the Kodak EasyShare M5370 to be an exercise in frustration. The camera is very uneven?even though it produces passable images, it doesn't perform that well in low light. It takes a long time to start up and shoot, and its touch screen is sometimes unresponsive. You'd be better served spending a bit more money on the Canon PowerShot 100 HS, which is comparable in image quality, starts faster, and performs much better in low light. If you're sold on a touch camera, the Sony Cyber-shot T110 gives you a nicer interface, but it is priced $60 higher. Our Editors' Choice in this midrange compact category, the Canon PowerShot 310 HS, is priced a full hundred dollars more than the Kodak, and predictably bests it in every regard. If you're looking for a good camera, and are happy to avoid the poorly implemented touch-screen interface, you may want to give our Editors' Choice for budget compacts, the $130 Panasonic Lumix DMC-S3. The S3 does sacrifice some zoom range and sharpness, but performs well in low light and records better-looking video. If zoom is a priority, the General Electric E1480W is only $10 more than the M5370 and gives you an 8x lens and records sharp images, but is troubled by noise in low light.

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