Primer for a trip to N.Z.
It's a nice and thick travel review of all the places most people would want to visit, when going to New Zealand for the first time. The smallish pictures are good for giving you an overview of the history and sites, and all of the major cities are covered.

nice pics
This is a nice reference guide when walking around town -- there are good pics and maps and it's a pretty light book. However it does not provide many recommendations on where to stay/eat so it's not too helpful in the planning stage except to get you excited about what you are going to see. Probably could've gone without it, but giving it 3-stars for being pretty... :)

Best travel guide
The DK books are always great, if a bit heavy because the pictures are so good. Another benefit, if you don't get there the guide makes you feel like you have been there anyway.

New Zealand Eyewithess Travel Guide is great for planning
Eyewithess Travel Guides give the best overall overview of any travel book or other travel product - good organization; great pictures, maps and other graphics; interesting & concise text and descriptions about history, national foods and beverages, etc.; good suggestions for lodging and eating. They are excellet resource and reference books, but they are concise enough to give a relatively complete overview but short enough to quickly convey information, especially if you do not have a lot of free time.

I believe that carefully reading about a desination is important for planning any trip. The Eyewithess Travel Guides are the best way to obtain that overview and prioritize where you want to go. The New Zealand guide is enormous help to us with our planning.

Use this DK travel guide like a shopping catalogue
This DK travel guide to New Zealand is quite good at describing that island nation in a general sense, and offering lots of beautiful color illustrations and photographs of neat places to go. But it's not so great as an actual travel guide. First of all, it's a bit heavy to carry around. Second, it is broad, rather than jam-packed with helpful details. Third, it offers up mostly white-bread, been-there-done-that activities and sites.

I suggest that you consult this DK guide **before** you head to New Zealand, in order to get familiar with the country and to pick the mainstream places and monuments you want to see. Then leave it at home, and bring a more dense, helpful guide along with you (such as "The Rough Guide to New Zealand").

The DK guide to New Zealand will make a handsome souvenir reference once you return home.