In case you missed it, after years of declining interest, point-and-shoot cameras are once again hot-ticket items. So it makes sense that Panasonic opted to bring back and update an old favorite, the ZS200 from 2018. The Lumix DC-ZS300 ($899.99) uses the same excellent Type 1 image sensor and 24-360mm lens as its predecessor, but drops the ZS200's eye-level viewfinder. That makes this upgraded camera more of a downgrade, but it keeps the price under $1,000, less than Sony's similar, EVF-equipped DSC-RX100 VII, a $1,500 camera that reigns as our Editors' Choice among large-sensor superzooms. The ZS300 is a step behind the RX100 VII in most respects, but a good alternative if you want a dedicated camera that goes toe-to-toe with flagship smartphones in daylight, includes a xenon flash, and has plenty of zoom power.

Design: A Pocket Zoom With a Type 1 Sensor

From a design perspective, the ZS300 is as typical as compact cameras get, a rectangular block with a screen on the back, a lens on the front, and shutter controls up top. The lens isn't quite flush with the body, but at 2.6 by 4.4 by 1.8 inches (HWD) and 10.4 ounces, I'd call the camera pocketable, though it may be a snug fit. It's not an exact match for the Sony RX100 VII, but it's close; the Sony is slightly smaller (2.3 by 4.0 by 1.7 inches) and a little heavier (10.7 ounces).

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Panasonic sells the ZS300 in black, which I received for review, or a metallic gray silver finish. Its exterior is mostly metal, with some plastic components. There is no advertised weather protection, but most compact cameras aren't sealed against the elements. Waterproof, rugged alternatives like the OM System TG-7 have to use internal zooming optics to maintain waterproofing, which means that they can't match the ZS300's 15x lens.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

A Type 1 format image sensor (also referred to as a 1-inch sensor) backs the zoom lens. This sensor size is commonly found on premium cameras like the RX100 VII, Sony ZV-1, and Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III, and it also backs the main lens on some smartphones that emphasize camera quality, like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. The Type 1 chip has four times the surface area of the Type 1/2.3 format used by most compact superzoom cameras, including the Lumix DC-ZS99 and the bridge-style Nikon Coolpix P950. The sensor format offers a solid upgrade in picture quality versus cameras with smaller sensors, and is a good option for discerning photographers who want something better than entry-level but don't want to carry a larger interchangeable lens mirrorless system.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Sensor size and image quality go hand in hand. Larger chips have an advantage in capturing detail, controlling noise, and extending dynamic range, but require larger lenses to project light across their surfaces. So while the ZS300's 24-360mm F3.3-6.4 (full-frame equivalent) zoom doesn't cover as much ground as the ZS99's 24-720mm F3.3-6.4 lens, it's still an accomplishment. The Lumix covers more angles than the Sony RX100 VII (24-200mm F2.8-4.5) or ZV-1 (24-70mm F1.8-2.8), though it doesn't gather as much light as either. The Sony cameras have a leg up in dim light and blur backgrounds more readily, but aren't quite as useful as the ZS300 for a trip to the zoo or for snapping pictures of squirrels in your backyard. Still, I think the Lumix ZS99 is a better pocket camera for wildlife photography, because its 720mm zoom lets you get closer views of animals without scaring them off.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The ZS300 includes a built-in xenon flash, an important differentiator versus smartphones, almost all of which rely on an LED light for illumination. The xenon flash does a better job of freezing motion when compared with an LED. It fires in the blink of an eye and is bright enough to fill in shadows for backlit scenes (like a portrait or selfie with the sun behind you). The direct-flash look is in vogue right now, and smartphones can't match it, which is one reason compact cameras are suddenly back in demand.

Controls: Dual Dials Will Satisfy Shutterbugs

The ZS300 is easy enough for anyone to use in its iAuto mode. In iAuto, the camera makes all the exposure and autofocus decisions. It also supports Program exposure, which works automatically but lets you adjust exposure, aperture, or shutter speed on demand, as well as Aperture priority, Shutter priority, and Manual, plus two dozen Scene modes for portraits, long nighttime exposures, food, and the like. The camera also has two Custom (C1, C2) slots that let you save a programmed bank of settings. It's easy to swap between capture modes using the dial on the top plate.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The top also houses the shutter button and its surrounding zoom rocker, a flexible control dial, and the movie Record button. A second flexible dial surrounds the lens, like the one on the top, and its function is configurable to taste via the menu. You can use the lens dial to adjust zoom, aperture or shutter speed, or exposure value (EV), while the top dial can also do any of those apart from zoom. I like using the lens ring for EV, a feature that changes how bright your picture looks, with the top dial reserved for shutter or aperture control. I tend to use pocket cameras in either aperture priority or shutter priority, depending on what I'm photographing—aperture for still life, landscapes, and portraits, and shutter for scenes where I want to make sure the camera freezes moving subjects like wildlife, or to use a longer shutter to smooth out flowing water in landscape photos.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

There are more buttons on the back of the camera. You'll find the mechanical release switch for the pop-up flash at the top, above the LCD, with an AE/AF Lock button just to the right, near the rear thumb rest. The Filter/Fn1, Zoom Frame Assist/Fn2, and Play buttons are just below the thumb indentation. Below those, you'll find the EV, White Balance, Drive/Self-Timer, and Macro Focus buttons arranged in a four-way pattern, with Menu/Set at the center. Finally, the Delete/Fn3/Q.Menu button and Disp. buttons are at the bottom right.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The Fn buttons are all configurable, and many controls are self-evident, but I'll call out Zoom Frame Assist as a useful feature that you don't find on every camera. It's handy when trying to take a zoomed-in picture of an uncooperative subject. Hold it in, and the lens will zoom out so you can find your target, then release it, and the lens zooms back in for a closer view. I found it handy when I spotted a pileated woodpecker on a tree in my backyard. I lost sight of it while trying to change my position to get a better angle, but Zoom Frame Assist let me center the lens on the bird and back in tight to try and get a decent photo.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The ZS300's 3-inch, 1.8-million-dot touch LCD is pretty good. It's bright enough to view outdoors, though glare can make it hard to judge exposure in direct sunlight. It's a good idea to cup your hand around the display if you're having a hard time judging a scene, and when checking photos during playback in sunny weather. As mentioned, the ZS300 drops the eye-level viewfinder included in the ZS200, a downside for use in bright light. The ZS200's viewfinder is quite small, but still useful. It's also a shame that Panasonic didn't add a tilting screen for this iteration. Doing so would have required its engineers to rework the body design, but would make it easier to take photos from low angles and work around sun glare. The Sony RX100 VII has an EVF and a tilting screen, both of which go a long way to justify its $1,499 price tag.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The touch interface is quite nice. You can tap on any part of the image to set the focus point, and there's a right-side pop-up menu that lets you swipe through different filter effects and turn either the digital level or histogram on or off with a couple of taps. The Q.Menu also has a touch interface so you can easily change the video frame rate and resolution, image aspect ratio and file format, autofocus mode, and area of interest, as well as the aperture, shutter speed, EV level, and ISO. The full text menu also supports touch input.

Power and Connectivity: A Long-Lasting Battery With USB-C Charging

The ZS300 uses a DMW-BLG10 battery pack, the same one from the ZS200 and ZS99. It's a sizable battery that keeps the camera running for long periods, with a CIPA rating of 360 photos per charge. It should be enough to power you through a typical day, plus supports on-the-go charging via USB-C. The camera also has a micro HDMI port, so you can plug it into a TV to view photos. The ZS300 has a single UHS-I SDXC memory card slot for storage.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

It also supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, so you can pair with the Panasonic Image Sync app for Android or iOS to copy images or use your phone as a wireless remote control. I had a difficult time getting the camera paired with my phone, however. I had to go through the process a few times before I got it working right. This is a symptom of Panasonic reusing older tech; the ZS300 has the same 2018-era network system and works with an app that's been abandoned in favor of Lumix Sync, which has a more modern interface, easier pairing, and support for newly developed cameras like the Lumix S1R II mirrorless.

(Credit: Panasonic/PCMag)

That said, once I got it up and running, Image Sync got the job done. It provides lag-free remote control with a live view from the lens and copies an image over to my phone in about 10 seconds. That's good enough for one-off or small batch transfers, but you're better off picking up an inexpensive SD card reader for your phone if you want to copy images in bulk.

Autofocus: Face and Eye Detection for Humans Only

The ZS300's autofocus engine is basic, but effective. The camera can focus on any part of the frame, right up to the edge, with selectable areas of interest ranging from a small pinpoint to the entire frame. It also supports face and eye detection for people, and has a subject-tracking mode that follows a target as it moves through the frame. The tracking isn't as good as what I've seen from mirrorless cameras like the Sony a6400 or the Nikon Z50 II. A good entry-level interchangeable lens camera is a fine tool for sports and wildlife photography; the ZS300 (or any pocket compact, for that matter) is not.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

That said, the autofocus is good enough for snapshot photography and candid photos of pets and kids at play, as long as you have good light. In daylight and well-lit interiors, the focus snaps to a target without delay. But in dim conditions, it struggles, taking a good second to lock onto a target, even with the camera's bright orange focus-assist lamp. The RX100 VII offers superior focus in tough light, thanks to on-sensor phase detection autofocus, which handles dim conditions better than the ZS300's contrast detection system.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Tracking is handy when you're trying to keep up with a subject moving through different parts of a scene, but I think the face and eye detection is more useful in general for this camera. As a pet parent, my complaint is that ZS300 doesn't support face detection for dogs and cats, though even without it, the camera reliably captured pictures of my cats with proper focus. I even had good luck getting images of perched birds and other suburban wildlife, so the ZS300 is a fine choice for a day trip to the zoo.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The camera supports a snappy 10fps capture rate with focus fixed after the first frame, or at 6fps with autofocus for every image. The camera can rattle off hundreds of JPG images at 10fps with no slowdown, but is limited to about 35 Raw images before the capture rate slows, a sign that the camera's buffer memory is full. It takes about 20 seconds to clear the buffer to a memory card, but you can continue taking images as the Raw files are saved to the card, though at a slower burst rate.

Image Quality: At Its Best in Daylight

I tested the ZS300 in my home studio to check its lens and sensor performance in a controlled environment, and also took it out and about to see what real-world photos looked like. I used Imatest and an SFRPlus test chart to check the lens. At 24mm f/3.3-5.6, the ZS300 scores in the good range for a 20MP sensor (2,100-2,200 lines), drops down to the acceptable range (1,800-1,900 lines) in the middle of the zoom (168mm f/5.9-8), and shows soft results at maximum zoom (1,500 lines). The Sony RX100 VII lens easily beats the ZS300 for detail. The Sony scores around 2,500 lines from 24-200mm, but doesn't have the same zoom power as the ZS300, and costs way more.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The 20MP Type 1 sensor is best at ISO 125-400 and shows only a slight loss of contrast and fine detail from ISO 800-3200. Pictures are a little softer at ISO 6400, but still quite usable. Tiny lines and textures in my ISO test scene blur together entirely at the maximum ISO 12800 setting, but colors remain faithful. The ZS300's Auto ISO is restricted to 125-3200 by default, so you'll need to switch to manual control or change the upper limit to access the highest settings.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The ZS300's relatively modest F3.3-6.4 f-stop means that you'll use it at higher ISOs in more scenarios than the Sony RX100 VII (24-200mm F2.8-4.5)—the ZS300 narrows to f/4.5 at 70mm. If you take a lot of pictures in low light, you may find the Canon G7 X Mark III (24-100mm F1.8-2.8) or Sony ZV-1 (24-70mm F1.8-2.8) to be a better match, though you'll sacrifice telephoto coverage entirely. The RX100 VII has a better balance of zoom power and aperture, but comes with a premium price tag.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The ZS300 sits in a niche for creators who tend to shoot during daylight hours, want a compact camera that covers wide-angle and telephoto scenes, and don't want to spend an arm and a leg. I think the ZS300's starting f/3.3 aperture is less of an issue today than in years past, thanks to smartphones. Phones use bright lenses that capture more light and automatically merge multiple short exposures together to get photos in near-dark environments. If you're using the ZS300 for snaps in dim light, you'll absolutely want to use the flash. It does a great job lighting up a subject in a dark room, and adds the bright pop and highlights to an image in a way that smartphone night shot modes and LED lights simply can't.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

The camera has a good selection of picture profiles so you can snap JPGs with different color tones and saturation (Custom, Leica Monochrome, Monochrome, Natural, Portrait, Scenery, Standard, Vivid), and it supports Raw capture for creators who prefer to edit shots in a workflow app like Adobe Lightroom Classic. The ZS300 also supports in-camera editing. You can reprocess any Raw photo with a different profile, adjust white balance, exposure, contrast, and more, without relying on desktop or mobile software.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

In addition to the profiles, the ZS300 has close to two dozen filters, including Bleach Bypass, Cross Process, Retro, Rough Monochrome, Sunshine, and many others. I had a good time trying the filters and like the stylized finish they add to images. There are a lot of them, but with some time behind the camera, you'll no doubt find your favorites. I'm disappointed that these filters aren't available for in-camera Raw processing, though, so you can't add them to images after capture. The flash is entirely disabled when using filters, too, which is a curious omission.

(Credit: Jim Fisher)

Video: Stable 4K, With a Crop

The ZS300 supports 4K30 and 4K24 (100Mbps), 1080p60 (28Mbps), 1080p30 (20Mbps), and 720p30 (10Mbps) video in MP4 format with H.264 compression, 8-bit color, and in-camera audio. It's a pretty basic toolset compared with Panasonic's interchangeable lens Lumix cameras, which are lauded for video work, but it's good enough for quick grabs and social media.

The 4K footage shows strong detail and faithful color, and I'm impressed with how steady handheld footage looks at maximum zoom. On the downside, using the camera at 4K noticeably crops the lens view. I imagine that the crop is required to reduce rolling shutter. I can see some evidence of skew (the effect where an object moving across the frame appears slanted) in the crop, but it'd be even more pronounced if the camera used the full width of the sensor.

The tighter angle of view isn't a bad thing for grabbing zoomed-in shots, but if you're trying to capture a wide vista, you're probably better off with your phone's 4K recording mode. In addition, there's no way to connect an external microphone, and the built-in mic picks up a ton of background noise. Ultimately, the ZS300 is a photo camera with a video mode, not a vlogging camera.