I have many happy recollections of high days and holidays in years gone by, and photographic evidence to prove it. That’s thanks to my trusty Panasonic Lumix TZ100. I bought the camera back in 2016, as a high-end compact that was genuinely small enough to carry in a spare pocket, mostly for family outings when my DSLR kit seemed too cumbersome. That Panasonic ‘Travel Zoom’ camera was superseded by the SZ200 / TZ200 in 2018, and then followed by the SZ300 / TZ300 that I’m reviewing here came along in 2026.
Like its forebears, the latest SZ300 (USA) / TZ300 (most of the rest of the world) features a relatively large 1-inch format image sensor and a zoom lens of generous proportions, at least in terms of optical zoom range. Even so, the retractable nature of the lens in each subsequent model makes the cameras truly pocketable, and while the original camera had a 10x optical zoom lens, it stretched to 15x for the 200 and 300 models, equating to 24-360mm in full-frame equivalence. All in all, the latest edition aims to follow suit in being one of the best travel cameras, best zoom cameras, and best point-and-shoot cameras on the market.
