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HP M517 available for £149 from

Certainly one of the first units - at the size - to support 5x optical, the images taken need depth of field to really see what can be achieved with a unit that easily fits in the palm of the hand.

The dimensions are 9x6x3cm and the weight is well under 200grams. The front has the Pentax lens 5.8-29mm 35mm equivalent, the flash and pre flash unit, the lens is covered when the camera is off but the covering is flimsy and I could see this being damaged if stored in a bag and no case is supplied as standard. The right side has a substantial anchor point for the supplied wrist strap. Left side is almost clear with the 'Mode' switch mounted at the top of the side while the top has the shutter releases for both still and moving images. Everything else is on the back of the unit that features a 4.5x3cm TFT display that gives an excellent view in all but the strongest sunlight. There is no viewfinder so all images need to be framed and shot using this display. A slider button mounted above the display is the on/off switch, to the right of this is a semi circular rocker switch for wide angle and telephoto, as with most cameras it can go beyond the 5x optical zoom into digital zoom and helpfully it shows the image getting smaller the more you extend into the digital zoom, well done HP I wish all manufacturers showed this and then far less people would be disappointed when they tried to print out images taken using extreme digital zoom. Apart from the more or less obligatory five position circular button that majors on the excellent menu structure there are four well illustrated buttons along the base of the TFT screen.

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The HP Photosmart R817 comes with 32MB or internal memory, it does accept SD cards - no card supplied - and images can easily be moved from the internal memory to an SD card. However it is a little more difficult to move images to the PC as this can only be done using the supplied plastic base 'cradle' that has a male fitment to go into the female opposite on the base of the unit. This then has an access point for the AC power to enter the camera to charge the lithium-ion battery and a standard USB lead that can be setup to be a camera or a mule on the PC as required, again a simple adjustment from the excellent menus. This cable can also be used for direct connection to PictBridge compatible printers.

The camera can take an average of 130 images between charges and should this not always be enough you might consider the R818 that comes with a second battery and a proper camera dock that also keeps the spare battery charged, cost around £27 more.

I liked the camera, it takes good images that can be blown up considerably, the flash works well although instant views of flash images often look disappointing on the TFT. Having a small unit with 5x optical is good. Apart from the maximum mode 5mega pixel you can also take images at 3, 1 and VGA as well as a user defined mode choosing your own compression setting, a novelty certainly, and something that will need lots of practice to achieve desired results. The internal memory can hold between 9 and 165 images dependant on mode and compression used. I would certainly purchase a decent sized SD card as they are currently very cheap. If you take video this can take movies in VGA or QVGA and between 33 and 133 seconds of video can be stored in internal memory, certainly a very positive reason for a SD card.

£219 from the HP site and a best of £199.74 from www.Misco.co.uk on doing a search.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF25a/5043-5683-5887-5887-11601873-11601897.html