Design & Performance

Casio EXILIM TRYX EX-TR100 review – Design

While the TRYX’s frame concept makes for a design spectacle, it fails to succeed in delivering well-rounded design finesse. Try to hold the TRYX TR100 like a normal camera, for example, and protruding fingers are very likely to get in the way of the aligned-to-the-side lens. The lens itself is small and flat against the body, so there’s no barrier to stop make your hands aware of exactly where it is. It’s far more successful using the camera like a Smartphone in a vertical-hold position.

The TRYX’s rotational frame has also led to the shutter release being positioned next to the LCD touchscreen, where it’s positioned towards the edge buy centrally aligned which can make for awkward use.

Other than the shutter and on/off buttons everything else is controlled through the touchscreen interface. As Smartphones have succeeded in delivering sensitive interfaces for a few years now this seems like a sensible idea, but the TRYX’s lack of sensitivity, small (virtual) menu buttons and sliders don’t make for ease of use. Given that all options are buried within the menus there’s a lack of immediacy in use too.

While we’d award plenty of points for forward-thinking, there’s just a lack of coherency here that makes the TRYX TR100 fall far short of the mark for conventional camera users. It’s almost exclusively designed for those unusual shots and applications, without giving a second thought to more common and casual use.

Casio EXILIM TRYX EX-TR100 review – Performance

Whichever way you twist it, the TRYX’s screen is good at recognising which way ‘is up’ and will relay options and previews back in the correct orientation.

For point-and-shoot work the TRYX TR100 is fine, but adjusting options using the camera’s touchscreen can be painfully slow. The menu layout often requires scrolling which can take multiple attempts before it’s responsive due to the sub-standard touchscreen. Digging to find the likes of ‘Macro’ focus or other options can take far longer than you may have to set up a shot.

The autofocus system has a central point and is fast to find focus, though the lack of a more complex array of focus areas is limiting. There’s no manual focus, though an ‘infinity focus’ option is available.

Movie mode is quickly accessible via a single-press button and the final quality is good. However, utilise the digital zoom during capture and the jump between crops is very visible in playback (it’s cropping the frame rather than zooming via optics) and the quality diminishes. For extra fill-in light, there’s an LED lamp that can illuminate subjects: a great feature to have for movie shooting, but hardly a replacement for a built-in flash.