HP Photosmart R727 is packed with innovative features — too many to list here. Some of my favorites include Adaptive Lighting, in-camera panorama stitching, Photosmart Express (photo sharing), and a redeye reduction system that really works. You won’t find many manual controls on this camera, though — in fact, there’s just one: white balance. That means that the camera makes its own decisions, which isn’t always the best, as the night shot illustrated.
The built-in Photosmart Express feature lets you e-mail, print, and share your photos by tagging photos on the camera in advance. Connect the camera to your Mac or PC and the photos are sent to the appropriate destination. The software side is a bit clunky, with a sluggish web-based interface and the fact that e-mailed photos aren’t really sent to the recipient — they go to Snapfish instead. The camera has a decent movie mode, though the frame rate is lower than on most of the competition.