Ten Essential... Budget Compact Cameras

Olympus FE-5030

The Olympus FE-5030 is compact camera with a double-layered crystal shell finish - as Olympus calls it - that gives the front of the camera body a lovely smooth texture. Handling has been simplified by removing most function buttons and using a scrolling menu system that runs down the right-hand side of the screen. This 14Mp model has useful 5x zoom (26-130mm), plus face-detection technology and AC/USB charging. With so many pixels crammed onto a chip, I was concerned about noise, but this wasn’t a problem - the FE-5030 produced crisp, clean images with good colour balance.

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Reg Rating 80%
Price £140
More info Olympus