I received my FX100 yesterday and have been playing with it and testing out its features and image quality. Here are some of my initial impressions.

1. Noise, noise, noise... It is present in all images, even at ISO 80. I am bit disappointed that Panasonic has not made much progress in reducing noise in their compact cameras. I previously had an FX-01 which I used for a year and it was a great little carry around camera but it also had noise problems. I can't say that the FX100 is considerably worse than the FX-01, I would say it is slighty worse. I also have a Fuji F40fd which has much less noise than the FX100. I would have to say this is biggest drawback/disappointment with the FX100.

2. Image contrast/saturation. The images look dull to me, even when compared next to the FX-01 images. I haven't tried turning up the contrast setting yet.

3. Build Quality is good but it doesn't seem quite as good as the FX-01.

4. Startup and shutdown times are slower than the FX-01, I would rate it as acceptable. Its a tad faster than the f40fd (which is very slow).

5. Zooming is slow, Panasonic should work on speeding this up.

6. Movie mode is good but I sure wish you could use the zoom.

Here are some sample images available for download. They are full size and unaltered. The subject matter is nothing special. You can clearly see the noise in all images, and the sharpness also leaves a bit to be desired.

http://65.100.24.201/fx100/fx100.htm