Design & Appearance
With an MSRP of roughly $180, the Fujifilm Z30 is a rather cheap camera — and it shows. It doesn't have the sophisticated design that many manufacturers are pushing right now, though some young people may be attracted to the bright colors and odd camera lines. It's shape is quirky, and available colors include pink, purple, and orange, each of which are extremely bright and vibrant. There are also standard white and black models for the more button-down photographer.
Size & Handling
The Z30 isn't uncomfortable to hold, but it has some handling issues. The main problem is the lack of any free space on the back of the camera. The entire back side is packed full of buttons and the LCD screen, which means you have nowhere safe to rest your thumb when you're taking a shot. The buttons themselves also have design flaws — they're too small, too close together, and the zoom buttons would be better off on the top of the camera.
As far as actual size is concerned, the Z30 is a splendidly compact device. Its dimensions are 3.6 x 2.3 x 1.0 inches (90.5 x 59 x 25.7 mm) and it weighs roughly 4.1 ounces (116.5g) not including the battery or memory card. Size-wise it's a good camera for carrying around in your pocket, although we aren't crazy about the protection provided by the sliding-panel lens cover design.
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| Even though it's small, the Z30 is annoying to hold. |
Menu
There's a lot of features stuffed into the menus on the Z30, so if you enjoy navigating through many options on a quest for finding one particular setting, you'll probably like your experience with the Z30. The playback menu is particularly cluttered and the Blog feature (which has post-process picture effects) is very difficult to access and understand. This, combined with the sub-par buttons on the camera make the menu system overall disappointing. There is one plus, however, the camera offers a bit of text about each setting to give you a better understand of what you are adjusting.
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| The menus on the Z30 have too many options |
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| The confusing Blog Trimming Menu |
Ease of Use
We were hoping the Z30 would provide an easy user experience and it does — to a point. Regular auto mode provides a good amount of point-and-shoot simplicity, but when you attempt to access some of the other modes on the camera you may run into some trouble. The playback effects are plentiful, but are really too confusing to use on a regular basis. The camera's instruction manual runs a huge 106 pages, which is not what you'd expect for such a small, simple camera. There's lots of hidden features on the Z30 and you'll probably need to crack open the manual if you want to master them all.
In fairness, the scene mode settings were also fairly easy to use and make the camera a decent choice for beginners.
