Don't expect much.

Author's Rating:

Pros: Small, durable, cheap. Very convenient.

Cons: Picture quality, viewfinder, flash, any other performance related attribute.

The Bottom Line: 
This camera is great for size and convenience. Its performance, however, is far below par. Be aware of its many limitations before purchasing.

Author's Review
The key to happiness is low expectations. So I've been told, and it's definitely true regarding this camera. If you keep in mind that the Logitech Pocket Digital 130 costs under $100 and is truly small enough to fit in your pocket, you might be able to accept the shoddy picture quality, poor color balancing, useless viewfinder, and chronic lens flare.

The Pocket Digital 130 is a true 1.3 Megapixel camera. It does not interpolate up from a 640x480 image, as its predecessor did. You also have the choice to take pictures at 640x480 resolution, which increases the number of pictures able to be held in memory from ~40 to ~130. The 16MB of internal flash memory cannot be removed, nor upgraded. Images are downloaded to a PC via the included USB cable. The lithium-ion battery is charged via this USB cable, and needs no other adapter or power source. I cannot give an accurate measure of battery life, because I have not had to recharge it yet (I've taken about 400 pictures so far). Needless to say, the battery life is more than adequate. Lens focus is fixed. Dimensions are approximately 6cm H x 9cm W x 2cm D. Flash settings include on, off, and auto, and are controlled by a small rubber button on the back of the camera. Similar nearby buttons allow you to change the image resolution settings, and allow you to delete a picture that you just took. In short, the camera has rudimentary buttons for rudimentary functions.

On the plus side, it's small enough to fit in my pocket fairly inconspicuously. I keep it in my pocket while hiking and mountain biking. I own a full-size camera, but I always take the Pocket 130 with me instead, because I'll actually use it. I remove it from my pocket, snap the picture, and put it back in. It takes about 10 seconds, which is great when I'm on the move.

Convenience comes at quite a price, however. To begin with, the picture quality is poor. Granted, it is much better than the last iteration of Logitech's Pocket Digital. Objectively, though, it doesn't compare to any full-size camera. The pictures look a lot like pointillist art, with images consisting of small blotches of color smudged together. Small details are lost, and the pictures are consistently too dark and/or too blue. Pictures taken with the sky in the background alternately come out way too dark, or washed out, depending on what is in the center of the picture. To make matters worse, lens flare is often apparent, to the point that it obscures parts of the image. And I'm not sure what the hype is about the Auto-brite feature, because it doesn't make a difference positive enough to notice.

And keep in mind that the pictures that I described above are the ones taken under optimal conditions, i.e. outdoors, in bright sunlight. Don't use this camera for indoor pictures, period. Logitech added a flash to the 130, but it might as well not be there. Flash pictures are washed out in the center and black at the edges if taken at very close range. If taken at a distance greater than 4 feet or so, the pictures are just plain black. In any case, the pictures are never good. Indoor pictures taken without a flash are usually mushes of blurred color, or staticky black.

The problems with this camera don't stop at picture quality. To begin with, the viewfinder is fairly useless. You may or may not actually get a picture of what appears in the viewfinder. More often than not, pictures come out off-center and fairly different than what you expected. There is a noticeable lag time between pressing the button and when the picture is actually taken, so the camera is also useless for action shots. And to top it all off, the labels on the buttons used to control the flash and other camera functions will eventually rub off, so you will have to memorize them, sooner or later.

Despite all of my complaints, I find myself using it again and again because it is extremely convenient and surprising durable. The bottom line is, I don't expect much out of the Logitech Pocket 130, so I'm not terribly disappointed by its lackluster performance. I know that I will probably need to open a picture in Fireworks or Photoshop, reduce the resolution, and run the "Auto-levels" function before it will begin to look decent. Anyone thinking about purchasing this product should expect the same, or be prepared for a huge disappointment.