"40X intelligent zoom (whatever that means). 5 MP stills."

The manual isn't entirely clear on this point but it appears that 40x is the maximum optical zoom. The camera then has two digital zoom settings - 60x and 1500x (!). Judging by the viewfinder screen the latter would be barely usable at its maximum setting.

Apart from the discourtecy of the video light as mentioned above, the inbuilt light would have very limited ability and probably hit the battery consumption significantly.

Still pictures - only based on a couple of shots from the Panasonic, but they appear compare very favourably with my older Pentax 12Mp DSLR.