Barely a few months after the 5-megapixel Exilim reached consumer markets, the 6-megapixel EX-S600 is out. Not letting its predecessor down when it comes to colors, this camera is available in four different hues with equally fancy names like Fiesta Orange, Sparkle Silver, Luminous Gold and Mistral Blue. However, the most striking difference in the two models lies not on its glossy exterior, but its bunny hop from 5 to 6 megapixels.

Design
Face it, we love compact cameras that perform but somehow we feel it's a conspiracy between vendors to confuse buyers with their near identical shooters. Think hit-confuse-and-run scenarios. Panasonic is guilty of that, and so is Nikon--from the Lumix FX8 to FX9 and the Coolpix S1 to S3, respectively. Now Casio wants to play the same game with its EX-S600. This catching-up game will inevitably end up with buyers having a never-ending list of choices. Except for the inscription along the top edge that says it's a 6-megapixel camera, we find it hard to distinguish the EX-S600 from the predecessor.

The EX-S600 has three dedicated blocks for each of the main recording functions on the camera. Unlike others, the movie record button lets the user skip a step by activating its primary function when it is pressed, rather than having to hit the shutter to start recording. While that saves time, unintentional presses on the button may frustrate users for they will have to delete the useless video to free up memory space.

In our previous review of the EX-S500, we mentioned the barely visible descriptions on the back of the camera especially when the unit was tilted at certain angles. In this new iteration, the problem is corrected. Wordings are in black and clearly visible.

Unlike Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX9's individual directional keys, the four-way control on the S600 is merged into one single key--the center button, on the other hand, is separate by itself. While the keys are responsive, larger digits will find it slightly more difficult to navigate the buttons for they are nearly flush with the body.

For that slim design, Casio has had to relegate connectivity options, including the DC-in, to the accompanying cradle. What's left on the camera is a tripod receptacle on the bottom edge of the unit. While the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T9 managed to get away with a non-extending lens, the S600 extends by another 2cm when powered up, revealing its 3x optical zoom lens.

We are probably nitpicking but we had difficulty removing our memory card from the camera because it's located too close to the compartment cover. If you have supersized fingers, you may have to depend on your nails to extract your memory card. Then again, unless you have a habit of swapping memory cards between gadgets, this shouldn't cause too much of a hindrance.

Features
You probably won't be interested, neither will you able, to manually configure the EX-S600 simply because the camera is a point-and-shoot. That aside, you'll likely be a bundle of nerves while changing settings within the menus because you will be booted out of the system back into the recording screen for every control you set.

For the uninitiated, Best Shot is also commonly referred to as Scene modes on other cameras. Whatever creative controls the S600 missed out, its 34 Best Shot scenes more than make up for nearly all conceivable general photography conditions. There are accompanying text descriptions for each which becomes important when some of the scenes require the camera to be kept still, preferably on a tripod to minimize camera shake.

There's no dedicated button for the camera's Anti-Shake feature and you will have to dig into the Best Shot configurations or turn it on from the menus. Unlike optical image stabilization systems where the lens moves to compensate for camera shake, the Anti-Shake on the EX-S600 increases sensitivity levels (up to maximum of ISO 1,600) while using a faster shutter speed in order to minimize image blur.

Nothing can hurt more to see baby pictures of yourself fading away into the background, literally. Despite claims from manufacturers that their printers can churn out pictures which last well over 100 years, at some point in time, they are bound to lose the colors. With the Revival shot on the S600, you probably do some damage control before everything goes away. The camera will record an image of the faded photograph and restore the colors automatically. That does sound a lot easier than powering up your scanner, scanning the picture, transfering it to a PC and doing some post-correction.

While a picture speaks a thousand words, a movie conveys literally moving memories--which is good if you wish to capture grandma crying instead of just a drop of tear on her cheek. The S600 is capable of recording VGA (640 x 480) MPEG-4 movies at 30fps--which is becoming a standard feature in the current lineup of consumer digital cameras. On our 1GB Imation Secure Digital card, we could record approximately 32 mins in high quality and twice as long in normal quality. We know people can get quite fickle-minded, so the movie feature on the EX-S600 allows users to record still shots while shooting a movie. What you give up is a slight second break in the movie which is when the still shot is being taken.

Performance
The capacity of the EX-S600's Lithium-ion battery should please most users. During our tests, we shot over 100 pictures, alternating with flash and zoom, without seeing a dip in the battery level indicator.

The S600 powered up and took its first shot at slightly under 2 seconds. Shutting down the unit was a little faster at 1.5 seconds. You can shoot thereafter at 1.6-second intervals without flash and every 3 seconds with flash forced on.

At the camera's highest resolution of 6 megapixels (2,816 x 2,112) in Fine quality, you can shoot continuously while holding down the shutter button, chalking up about 38 frames per minute (0.63fps). We noticed the EX-S600 operated at a more reasonable speed of 1.08fps when we dropped to shooting at 2 megapixels (1,600 x 1,200).

The built-in flash on the EX-S600 reached just about 1.5m when the unit was at its maximum telephoto (3x optical zoom) setting.

If you just wanted to review pictures, holding down the playback button for 2 seconds would activate the camera without actually prepping the unit to take photos.

Image Quality
Our test pictures generally turned out all right though we felt colors were somewhat muted at its default setting. We had the option of increasing the saturation/contrast levels either by one or two notches or post-correct it on a photo-editing software like Photoshop.

The camera tended to blow out highlights especially in the whites, resulting in loss of details. We also felt the built-in flash was rather weak in some of our shots and had to increase the intensity levels on the camera.

Noise levels within the user-selectable options from 50 to 400 were manageable. However, at the maximum ISO 1,600 setting, our pictures were barely usable.