HP would not be the first to offer up a camera with a touch sensitive display, that honor goes to Toshiba with its PDR-T series which by today’s standards are relatively primitive. Sony was next to offer a camera with a touch display and that was followed up by some pseudo touch screen models by Samsung. HP manages to outdo all of them, by offering larger screens on certain models and guaranteed compatibility with Windows Vista.

Not all the new cameras have been endowed with a touch display that honor goes to the top-of-the-line R937. The R937 features a 3x optical zoom with an 8 megapixel sensor, a large 3.6 inch touch sensitive display with auto-bright feature, virtual keyboard and image tagging capabilities.

HP also includes some editing tools on this camera as well, red eye removal; blemish removal and the ability to make your (human) subjects appear 10 pounds lighter. So, no more complaining that the camera ads 10 pounds. The price of the R937 will be $300 with availability around August.

The next model down, the Mz67 forgoes the touch screen but offers up a longer than average 6x optical zoom coupled to an 8 megapixel sensor and has a slightly smaller 2.5 inch LCD display. The Mz67 will be available for $200.00 when it hits the market in August.

Coming in even cheaper at $180 is the R742 which offers a 7 megapixel sensor, 3x optical zoom, a 2.5 inch display and an in-camera red-eye removal feature.

In last place is the E337 which is a 5 megapixel shooter without an optical zoom and a not so expensive $80 price tag.

Also on offer in all the new models is 16MB to 32MB of internal memory with the R937 and Mz67 offering up an anti-shake mode but does not offer optical image stabilization, instead it will use higher ISO settings to deal with moving subjects or motion blur.

My opinion on these cameras, at least the ones that offer the anti-shake mode, is to avoid that feature, if you’re spending $300 or more for a camera you may as well look for one that offers true optical stabilization, my favorite is the Canon PowerShot SD800IS which only has a 7.1 megapixels sensor but more than makes up for that with superior optics, a 3.8x wide angle zoom lens and true optical image stabilization, for the same price as the $300 R937 and immediate availability if you can live without having a touch screen and you know what, I can.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 7:33 pm under Digital Camera, HP, New Products, Point and Shoot.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.