We had spent a long time checking out cameras as our old point and click was dying slowly ... I had finally settled on Panasonic's similar one to this: loads of excellent reviews and obviously well-used by a large number of people. In fact I had virtually ignored this particular camera as there was only a small handful of reviews ... hence I'm writing this to boost the numbers as the world needs to know how good it is!!
The Pentax X90 is amazing! We are pretty hopeless knowing SLR type manual settings, but the automatic settings plus the huge range of various possible modes where you need a little extra help, (sunsets, night time, sports etc) are wonderful. We can't believe some of the shots we've taken - needless to say our favourites are the incredible telephoto ones (clear in spite of wobbly hands due to the Shake Reduction function - even without a tripod most of the time) and also the macro shots that show such detail ... not sure I always want to see insects like that!
Frankly, we are amazed at the great pictures we are getting with little effort. The other thing is that we are looking at our world differently now - looking for new angles, interesting views, plants and insects that we wouldn't normally look at. The zoom is simply phenomenal. We have an excellent pair of binoculars, but the Pentax zoom is even better than these as, short of using a tripod, the binoculars are always shaking at long distances - we can take a photo and, Abracadabra, the photos is solid and un-blurred! Neat!
Light and easy to carry - not sure how robust it is as we've only had it 6 weeks and we've been treating it very, very gently - never had a camera as good as this!