Panasonic Lumix LX10 / LX15 review

Although there's always been a healthy interest in the premium end of the compact market, Sony’s decision to squeeze a 1.0-inch sensor into the RX100four years ago gave the format a much-needed boost. 

While such cameras have their limitations, and cannot always serve as a substitute for interchangeable-lens systems, the continuing improvement in the quality of their output, and their compact proportions, mean they’re often a first choice for general shooting – and sometimes more considered photography too. 

• Buy Panasonic Lumix LX15 at Amazon for £599.00

Sony has enjoyed great success with its RX100 line, partly because of the sensor at the heart of these models but also thanks to the use of high-quality optics and advanced video functionality. 

Rival manufacturers, however, have fought back with similar propositions. Canon’s PowerShot G7 X and G7 X II have been Sony's main competitors to date, and now Panasonic has stepped into the ring too, with the LX10 (known as the LX15 outside the US).

Of course, Panasonic is no stranger to enthusiast compacts, with its LX series of cameras often considered as some of the finest of their kind. Yet, this is the first model to sport the same combination of a 1.0-inch sensor, short but high-quality zoom lens, and a body that’s designed similarly to Sony and Canon’s alternatives.

Panasonic’s naming convention suggests the model is positioned above the now-discontinued LX7, which used a respected but ageing 1/1.7-inch type of sensor, and the still-current LX100, which employs the larger Micro Four Thirds type (but at the expense of size).

The LX10 is pocketable, replete with manual controls and has an impressive spec sheet; but does it offer anything different enough to its more established 1.0-inch-sensor-toting competitors to warrant serious consideration?

Features

• 1.0-inch CMOS sensor, 20.1MP
• 24-72mm f/1.4-2.8 zoom lens
• 4K video capture

The Lumix LX10 is designed around a 20.1MP 1.0-inch CMOS sensor, the same kind that has been incorporated into Panasonic's recent ZS100 / TZ100 and FZ2000 superzoom models. This captures images in a 3:2 aspect ratio as standard, over a capable sensitivity range of ISO125-12,800, with expansion settings down to ISO80 and up to ISO25,600 equivalents.

In addition to stills, the sensor records video in 4K quality, here in the 4K UHD format (3840 x 2160 pixels). This is captured at a maximum frame rate of 30fps, with 25fps and 24fps options also on hand, although if this is surplus to requirements, or you’re using a slower memory card, you can opt for Full HD recording at a variety of frame rates up to 60fps instead.

4K video recording is complemented by a whole suite of supporting and related options, such as the ability to pull 4K-resolution frames from footage and a 4K Live Cropping option that allows you to zoom into the scene and set the camera to automatically pan across, outputting the results at a Full HD resolution

The lens travels between 24-72mm (in 35mm-equivalent terms), and has a respectably wide aperture of f/1.4-2.8. Its short focal range and wide maximum aperture indicates that this is a high-quality optic, a fact underlined by the presence of two dual-sided aspherical ED elements, four dual-sided aspherical elements and a single Ultra High Refractive (UHR) element.  

The optic has also been furnished with a nine-bladed diaphragm to help deliver circular bokeh, and can focus down to 3cm from the subject when used at its wide-angle setting in a macro mode. Panasonic has also fitted it with an optical image-stabilisation system, which works in conjunction with sensor-based stabilisation to form a five-axis Hybrid OIS+ system. 

The rear of the camera sports a 3.0-inch touchscreen LCD, with a 1.04 million dot resolution and the option to tilt it upwards and around a full 180 degree rotation so that it ends up facing the front. This action immediately brings up a handful of portrait-specific modes such as skin softening and slimming filters, both available in various degrees. 

A handful of Photo Styles enable you to vary colour effects and to call upon monochrome options, and you can even create your own with a Custom setting. These are bolstered by a range of Filter Effects such as Expressive, High Key and Retro, and you can use these for both stills and video recording.

This is a great time of year to grab a cheap TV deal and you don't necessarily have to wait for Black Friday either. Check out the latest seasonal discounts in our extensive guide below for cheap HD and 4K TV deals.

The days of paying over a grand for a 40-inch TV are long gone as you can see – you can now pick up 40-inch models for under £200, or even 4K 50-

Apple Watch price and release date

Update: We take a look at the new Nike+ Apple Watch in our running section of the review - does it improve things or is it branding for the sake of it?

You want to know two things about the Apple Watch 2 (or Apple Watch Series 2 if we're being picky): is it a big enough upgrade to beat the first Watch, and has Apple done enough to make a smartwatch a necessity, rather than just a novel luxury?

Well, Apple's brought a lot of the tech upgrades we wanted: with the Watch 2 you're getting a new water-resistant design, a GPS chip on board for tracking your runs, a swim tracker and a much faster processor.

There's a new white ceramic finish too – which takes the place of the extortionately expensive gold Apple Watch Edition – to add an element of 'luxury' to proceedings, with the Hermes band making an appearance again to keep the top cost of the Watch 2 higher.

Xbox One clearance sale store links

It looks like they really want their shelves cleared for the new lineup Xbox One S deals and PS4 Slim/Pro deals. This means there are some massive discounts to be had on Microsoft's excellent 'original' console and it's an excellent opportunity to save a lot of money ahead of Christmas.

To sweeten the deal many of these Xbox One consoles have a few games thrown into the mix. We're not talking a bunch of old dusty bundle games either. So instead of a copy of last year's FIFA 16,  you could be getting a copy of Forza Horizon 3 or Gears of War 4.

Directly below you'll find links straight to the sale pages of the participating stores. Scroll down a bit further though and you'll see our picks of the best deals we've seen so far for your convenience. For some perspective, many of these deals were going for around £250 last week and didn't include the bonus of the additional new games for free.

go prod

And yes, you read that right. Having waited this long for GoPro to finally embrace micro-USB ports in place of mini-USB, the company has now moved onto USB Type-C instead. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good move – especially if you have a newer smartphone featuring USB Type-C – but it just tickles me that it happened so rapidly after an initial long wait.

Removing the need for the waterproof case in most shooting scenarios is a big deal. Not only is it more convenient, and makes for a smaller camera, but the audio-capture performance is much improved now that the microphones aren’t encased.

Like the Hero Session, the Hero 5 Black features dual microphones, front and back, which the camera can swap between for the best performance – especially in windy situations. If you’re on a bike, for example, the camera can intelligently swap to the rear microphone for less wind noise.

As a bonus, the Hero 5 Black weighs about 30g less than the Hero 4 Black in its case, which will make it slightly less noticeable if you have it attached to a helmet or on your body.

Instead of having to use the waterproof case from older cameras for mounting, the Hero 5 Black now comes with a plastic frame that wraps around the edge, with the standard GoPro mount on its base.

camer

And yes, you read that right. Having waited this long for GoPro to finally embrace micro-USB ports in place of mini-USB, the company has now moved onto USB Type-C instead. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good move – especially if you have a newer smartphone featuring USB Type-C – but it just tickles me that it happened so rapidly after an initial long wait.

Removing the need for the waterproof case in most shooting scenarios is a big deal. Not only is it more convenient, and makes for a smaller camera, but the audio-capture performance is much improved now that the microphones aren’t encased.

Like the Hero Session, the Hero 5 Black features dual microphones, front and back, which the camera can swap between for the best performance – especially in windy situations. If you’re on a bike, for example, the camera can intelligently swap to the rear microphone for less wind noise.

As a bonus, the Hero 5 Black weighs about 30g less than the Hero 4 Black in its case, which will make it slightly less noticeable if you have it attached to a helmet or on your body.

Instead of having to use the waterproof case from older cameras for mounting, the Hero 5 Black now comes with a plastic frame that wraps around the edge, with the standard GoPro mount on its base.

WHAT IS THE GOPRO HERO 5 BLACK?

the Hero 5 Black is the GoPro camera option for those who want the best action cam available right out of the box. You can almost think of the Hero 5 Black as GoPro’s "Greatest Hits" compilation. It takes the best features from previous generation GoPro cameras and combines them together in a single unit – and adds a smattering of new functions too.

What's the recipe for the best GoPro camera? Take the same 4K resolution, 30fps video of the Hero 4 Black, throw in the touchscreen display that was a feature of the Hero 4 Silver (and only an optional extra for the more expensive Black), and mix in the built-in waterproof capabilities and improved audio performance of the Hero Session.

Top this lot off with electronic image stabilisation (finally!), useful voice controls and GPS, and you have one superb action camera – and the best one GoPro has ever released. 

iphon

That’s all well and good, but for many who own a great pair of wired headphones this will prove a problem. Apple has resolved it to a great extent by providing a pair of Lightning Earpods and a small adapter in the box with the iPhone 7. The adapter lets you plug wired headphones into the charging port. It works well, but you won’t be able to charge your phone and listen at the same time, plus it’s small and easy to misplace.

There are some neat third-party Bluetooth aptX headphone adapters available, such as the £69 Noble Audio BTS, but be prepared for an inevitable drop in audio quality when used with high-end headphones.

I haven’t been too affected by the lack of jack. Having bought into the convenience of wireless headphones a few years ago, I now favour them over my better-sounding wired pairs. It’s a transition I expect many of us will make over the coming years.

The other design change I got to grips with quickly is the new Home button – if you can still call it that.

Gone is the iconic click; it now has capacitive touch sensitivity. That means it works using the tiny bits of electricity in your fingers, just like the screen does, so if you’re wearing normal gloves it won’t function.

Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/iphone-7-review#RSoSpkUxRdeVWMU4.99

The second new colour on offer is simply called Black. This replaces the Space Grey of previous models and makes the iPhone 7 looks like a mean machine. The other colours available are Silver, Gold and Rose Gold.

The iPhone 7’s size and shape is almost identical to the previous models, however the antenna bands that formerly ran across the back now tastefully curve around the ends, and the camera nub is more rounded. These changes are small, but welcome. It does feel like competitors have overtaken Apple in some respects, though.

IPHONE 7 – DESIGN

There’s not much to talk about when it comes to the aesthetics of the iPhone 7. If you’ve used an iPhone 6 or 6S you’ll feel immediately at home.

For standing out from the iPhone crowd, the new Jet Black finish is really your only option. A Jet Black iPhone 7 looks like no other handset. It’s not like the plastic iPhone 5C – this is a phone made out of metal, but which is smooth to touch without being slippery. Yes, it attracts fingerprints, but who cares when it looks this good?

But like the eponymous Batman villain, the iPhone 7 has two faces. The removal of the headphone jack feels unnecessary and restrictive, the handset costs more than the 6S did when it was released last year (in the UK at least), and the iPhone 7's battery life is a real problem.

If you want a small Apple phone you'd be better off opting for the iPhone SE. Alternatively, if size isn’t an issue, last year’s iPhone 6S Plus remains a great phone, has strong battery life and costs exactly the same as the iPhone 7.

The iPhone 7 certainly hasn't slipped into the world with a whimper thanks to a familiar design, headphone controversy and a price hike seemingly in the wake of Brexit.

When you look at it you’ll wonder what’s changed – it looks pretty much the same as an iPhone 6. Granted that design was good, but would any other company get away with a two-year-old look for a brand-new phone?

Get past this and the iPhone 7 delivers a unique experience among iPhones. The new features – water resistance, an incredible quad-core processor and, crucially, a 32GB starting storage capacity – are all very welcome. So is the excellent camera that’s had upgrades to actually make photos look better, rather than just a needless bump in megapixels.

WHAT IS THE IPHONE 7?

The iPhone 7 retains those chunky top and bottom areas of its bezel and this means it offers less screen space for its size than the HTC 10, LG G5 or Samsung Galaxy S7. The latter has very similar dimensions but comes with a 5.1-inch screen, compared to the 4.7-incher on the iPhone 7.

That’s all there is to discuss about the aesthetics. However, there’s plenty to talk about when it comes to design. Apple's made some fundamental changes to the iPhone 7 that will affect the way you use your phone for better and worse.

Let’s start with the missing headphone socket. For some people this is going to be a big issue, but it hasn’t been a problem for me.

There are a number of potential reasons why Apple's decided to remove the 3.5mm socket from the iPhone 7, but the company won’t outright tell us why.

Space seems to be the primary factor when you look at the internal design. The new Haptic engine is a lot chunkier and takes up some of the space, as does the louder speaker that's been crammed into the bottom. Apple has clearly decided improved features on the iPhone 7 are better than keeping a 50-year-old connection, particularly since wireless headphones have become increasingly popular over the past few years. In fact, Apple has launched its own wireless headphones, called AirPods. Shame you're going to need 'courage' to wear AirPods outside...

mac

With their desktop- and laptop-caliber specifications, the minis also excel in other areas. The stock mini comes with a 500GB hard-disk drive and 4GB of memory. Each provides enough overhead for multimedia storage and allows the operating system to run smoothly. The case's locked down, upgrade-unfriendly design is a minor inconvenience but additional memory and hard drive storage can be added during the checkout configuration process. A rear SDXC card slot lets you supplement the mini's existing storage and easily pull files like photos from a camera to display onscreen.

mac

Despite its diminutive size, the OS X-powered Mac mini is designed to be comparable to a standard desktop or laptop computer. Internally, it has the specifications to match these performance goals.

The base configuration of the mini is built with a 1.4GHz Intel Core i5-4260U processor and Intel integrated graphics card. While the computer's integrated graphics card covers little besides video streaming and barebones gaming, the fast Intel Core processor has excellent processing overhead. For enthusiast users, it competently handles tasks like media streaming and transcoding without significant issues. Alternative mini configurations provide additional processing overhead with Intel models up to the 3.0GHz Intel Core i7-4578U.

In practice, the Mac mini has few performance bottlenecks for multimedia applications. While it's not explicitly intended for multimedia PC usage, the Macs at each pricing tier are effective Swiss Army knives, sporting a solid foundation of components capable of handling tasks including basic web browsing, video streaming and active media server usage.

IPHONE 6S LONG-TERM REVIEW: IT'S STILL A GREAT PHONE

Summer is always a strange time to buy an iPhone. You’ve got much newer phones out like the HTC 10, Samsung Galaxy S7 and the much cheaper OnePlus 3. Apple even has a newer phone, the much smaller and affordable iPhone SE. But there's still plenty of reason to pick up the iPhone 6S, maybe even over the iPhone 7.

If the rumours are to be believed, the upcoming iteration might only be a minor update with the real snazzy new features coming next year to celebrate 10 years of the iPhone. You'll also get a bunch of new features when iOS 10 hits later in the year.

Related: iPhone 7 release date

So the iPhone 6S is still a great phone and one that I’m happy to recommend. It’s the middle iPhone size-wise, and in my mind feels the most comfortable to hold. The SE is limited by its small size, while the iPhone 6S Plus is often ungainly. The 4.7-inch display, which sits above a 720p resolution, is soundly beaten on paper by the Android rivals but it’s compact and still looks good.

WHAT IS THE SAMSUNG GALAXY S7 EDGE?

The curved screen is Samsung’s new headline design trait, and it’s using it more and more frequently. The S7 Edge is the best version of it yet, I haven’t spent enough time with the Galaxy Note 7 just yet, and it makes for an iconic phone. It's more eye-catching than the regular Samsung Galaxy S7, too.

It doesn’t just impress in the looks department though; this is an all-round stunner. It has the best optics, crispest screen and even Samsung’s software has taken a step back. The sloping display might make it harder to hold for some, but it’s never become an issue for me.

It’s expensive, it’s always going to be, but you’re getting a lot of phone for your money.