When announced back in January, Kodak's EasyShare-One was expected to be a breakthrough in digital photography—the first point-and-shoot digital with built-in wireless. Kodak didn't quite make first, since the Nikon Coolpix P1 and P2 beat the Kodak entry to market by a few weeks, but the EasyShare-One certainly has some outstanding features that set it apart from the P1. The question is, do the great features make up for the camera's many shortfalls?

The EasyShare-One is a 4MP camera with a 3X optical zoom lens (a 35mm equivalent of 36mm to 108mm) that has a maximum f/stop range of f2.8 to f/4.8 across the zoom range. The specs don't tell you much on their own, though. To see what's different, you need to open up the camera. When you do, what you'll see is a beautiful, articulating 3-inch touchscreen LCD. And to help you get in touch with the screen, you'll find a small stylus.

The LCD is gorgeous, but Wi-Fi is the main selling point. Unlike the Nikon Coolpix P1, which has a wireless antenna permanently attached to its side, the EasyShare-One uses an 802.11b wireless card that comes with the camera and will work on any 802.11b network. Pop the card into a slot on the top of the camera, switch to picture review mode, and the card begins searching for wireless networks. Select the appropriate one, and you're ready to transfer photos wirelessly. The process is quite intuitive—almost instinctive—thanks to an excellent graphical user interface that's among the best we've seen.

To appreciate how easy the EasyShare-One is to use, you really have to contrast it with the Nikon Coolpix P1, which an average consumer will find difficult to set up. The only advantage with the Coolpix P1 wireless is that you can shoot and send pictures; the Kodak camera has to be in review mode to send.

We tested the EasyShare-One using two wireless networks—one with WEP enabled, the other open—and had no trouble connecting. We easily sent photos to our account on Kodak's EasyShare Gallery photo-sharing and printing Web site. Then, right from the camera, we opened up an online photo album and e-mailed a photo.

After installing the Kodak EasyShare software on our computer, we were able to send the picture file itself directly to the computer. The transfer took around 7 seconds, and we encountered no problems.

If you do come across a problem, there's no need to fret. Kodak integrates an impressive assortment of resources that clearly explain how to reconnect to your wireless network. There's even a fairly comprehensive DVD to give consumers the instruction they need for starting out and staying connected. Nikon needs to support the Coolpix P1 in the same way and include these items in the box instead of relying so heavily on its tech site.

Although the EasyShare-One amazed us with its wireless capabilities, we found some problems in our test shots. Were it not for the picture quality and slow performance, the camera would have been an easy pick for our Editors' Choice award. Our simulated-daylight shots revealed little colored noise, but did show some non-colored noise, which contributed to the soft-focus quality of the image. Color saturation was vibrant, but we saw a bit of a reddish cast in the whites of both our daylight and flash shots.

We also saw some fringing throughout both shots. Exposure was pretty good in our shots, but dynamic range was just average, revealing a little too much contrast and not capturing enough of the subtleties of our still-life model. The flash was a bit too powerful, and the highlights were blown out in both our simulated-daylight and flash shots. Our resolution test results averaged 1,100 lines, which is on the low side for a 4MP camera.

In other tests, the camera was all over the map. It was incredibly slow to boot, at 10.3 seconds, but had an excellent recycle time (1.3 seconds) and no shutter lag at all. In fact, once the EasyShare-One was up and running, it performed nearly as quickly as some D-SLRs.

We found no pincushion distortion, and just a bit of barrel distortion, but we did see some uneven focus in the way the camera captured our test grid—the bottom portion was more out of focus than the top, which may indicate a problem with the lens at the wide end of the zoom range. The telephoto end of the zoom range revealed no such problems.

The camera's QuickTime video clips, compressed with MPEG-4, are 640-by-480 at 30 frames per second. With the 256MB of internal memory, you can store 6 minutes of video, but Kodak's online sharing service does not let you upload video. Like the Coolpix P1 and P2, the EasyShare-One uses a proprietary lithium ion battery to power the digital camera and wireless card. The company claims battery life of 120 to 180 shots per charge, and the camera comes with two batteries.

Between the great screen, wireless capabilities, and ease of use, the Kodak EasyShare-One has a lot to offer, though the pictures do have some flaws. At $599.95 list, it's $50 more than the Nikon Coolpix P1 and $200 more than the 5MP Coolpix P2, but these cameras don't come close to offering the EasyShare-One's level of usability and variety of options.

Compare these two Wi-Fi cameras side by side in our comparison table, and see their respective benchmark test results.