TechRadar Reviewed Caira (and Said They’re Cancelling Lightroom)

It’s not every day you wake up to find one of the world’s biggest tech publications asking if your product has made Adobe Lightroom redundant. But that’s exactly what happened this morning when we opened TechRadar.

For the past few years, our team at Camera Intelligence has been heads-down, obsessed with a single, slightly radical idea: that the future of photography isn’t just about higher megapixel counts. It’s about removing the friction between taking a shot and sharing it. We wanted to build a camera that didn't just capture light but understood what you were trying to create.

Enter Caira. And, if we’re being honest, we were holding our breath a little bit before the reviews started rolling in. It’s one thing for us to say our "Nano Banana" AI is a game-changer; it’s another thing entirely for a seasoned reviewer like Rashid Ahmad to say it "feels like magic."

"A Liberating New Frontier"

In his comprehensive review for TechRadar, Ahmad didn’t pull any punches. He called Caira a "weird but impressive hybrid," which we are absolutely taking as a compliment. We didn’t set out to make a standard mirrorless camera, and we certainly didn't want to make just another smartphone accessory. We wanted to merge the two.

The review highlights exactly what we’ve been striving for: a seamless workflow. Ahmad noted that Caira "solves the 'I'll edit that later' lie we all tell ourselves." We’ve all been there—SD cards full of amazing RAW files that sit on a hard drive for six months because the thought of importing, culling, and color-grading is just too much effort after a long day.

Hardware Meets "Nano Banana" Magic

What we were most relieved to see was the recognition that Caira is, first and foremost, a camera. It’s got a proper Micro Four Thirds sensor and mount. It takes lenses from Panasonic, Olympus, and Sigma. As the review put it, this isn't "a toy pretending to be a camera."

But the real star of the show was our on-device AI. The review detailed the experience of using voice commands to "turn this daylight shot into night" or "make my blazer burgundy." Seeing a critic’s genuine surprise at how fast and convincing these edits are was a huge win for our engineering team.

The End of the "Import-Edit-Scream" Cycle

Perhaps the most humbling part of the write-up was the verdict on our subscription model. We know subscriptions can be a touchy subject. But seeing a reviewer explicitly state that their Caira Pro subscription is "much cheaper than what I pay for Lightroom, which I will now use a lot less" validates our belief that we are offering genuine value, not just a paywall.

We built Caira for creators who love the ritual of photography—the click of the shutter, the weight of a good lens—but hate the hours spent staring at a progress bar. We’re thrilled that TechRadar gets it.

If you want to read the full breakdown, check out the review on TechRadar. And if you’re ready to ditch the "import-edit-export-scream" routine, our Kickstarter is live.