Hardware as in the casing.
the quality is decent. it is not shooting in RAW, so that is an shortfall. no HD video.
so if you have some money.. might as well get a new camera and casing. If you buy the casing which will be pretty expensive. then u might as well buy a new camera with a new casing( and probably find one that has more then one type of casing).
its a discontinued model, but a good model.