I used an FZ5 for a few years (5Mp). Image quality all depends on your expectations. From a professional point of view, yes, the comments you've heard are true. If you look closely at images from these cameras, if you know what you are looking for, you will see noise problems even in small images.
I only ever shot at ISO 100, and certainly could see noise problems in the resultant images. However, I did do a wedding shoot for a friend, with mostly 5x7s, and a few enlargements up to 8x10. The shots would never stack up against a professional SLR camera, but they still looked good, and they were more than happy with the result.
Enlargement size is not really about enlargements anyway. It's just about image quality. The better the camera, the better the image. The better the image, the more you can enlarge before you see the problems.
Generally, the bigger the camera, the bigger the enlargements. :) Because bigger cameras have bigger sensors and bigger lenses, not because bigger is better, but because smaller is worse.
So, to answer your question, the FZ50 will probably be better than the others you mentioned. The others will all be roughly around the same par. But, that is probably kind of obvious from the price tags.
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