Olympus XZ-1 (photos)

Taking a leaf out of Canon's book, Olympus puts a control dial on the XZ-1's lens that you can use to adjust a variety of settings, such as shutter speed or aperture. It works and feels very similar to Canon's version on the PowerShot S95. The camera itself is bigger than the S95--it's closer in size to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5--but still pretty comfortable to carry and shoot.

Like its competitors, the XZ-1 has a full set of manual controls. It also has a custom setting slot on the mode dial, and incorporates Olympus' signature Art Filters.

The user interface is pretty straightforward and doesn't have any perplexing operational oddities. I like the scroll wheel. Additionally, the XZ-1 has a nice 3-inch OLED display.

Though it's a bit large and relatively heavy, the XZ-1 has a pretty narrow body.