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This unit is small at 9x5.5x3.5cm which I think is small enough to fit in most pockets, it has certainly spent a fair bit of time in mine. It weights less than 200 grams.

It is a 5.1 mega pixel camera and has 3x optical zoom and should you want it 8x digital zoom, hence the claimed 24x zoom -long pause before continuing- I do not think multiplying digital and optical zooms together is helpful- start new paragraph before I say more.

The face of the unit is chromed and has the lens (covered when switched off) flash and viewfinder, I think it looks sleek but I am no fashion guru. The right side is also chromed and has the anchor point for the wrist strap. The left side has a small rubberised bung covering mini USB and DC input. The rear has battery and SD card cover as well as docking point and tripod mount. Top of the unit has shutter button as well as movie shutter and another button to change the various shooting modes.

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The rear has the 3x2.5cm TFT screen which works well in all but the strongest sunlight you can use this to frame images but there is also a viewfinder, next to this is the on/off slider, beyond this slightly recessed is the zoom/wide angle rocker button that doubles as a zoom when viewing taken images. There are seven other buttons arranged in an inverted L around the TFT all are clearly marked and should you need more information a perfectly acceptable manual is provided. Finally a five position button gives access to menus and sub menus. Having picked a menu and worked down to the item you want you need to back out to return to normal usage. One feature I do not remember seeing on other digital cameras is a help menu so if you are out and about you can get help on almost anything that the camera does, very useful if you are using a feature that you do not normally use.

The unit can take an SD card and indeed one of the menu options allows transfer of all (or some) of your taken images to be moved to an SD card once inserted. From then on the images are saved on the card until removed when it again reverts to the internal memory. Somewhere this is referred to as 32MB but I found it was only 26.2MB, no doubt the rest is serving other purposes.

Transfer of images from the internal memory is by USB lead and the camera appears as a hard disk in My Computer and you can then drag and drop files to and from it. There are four different image sizes with the 5megapixel mode having two compression modes making a total of five different sizes on disc. In the best mode 5megapixel 3 star you would get around 11 images on the internal storage, if taking VGA images this would be around 200. However apart from the display showing the normal remaining images at that resolution by going to the menu it can tell you how many are available at each of the image sizes simply by scrolling to that size. It is also possible to create custom image size and custom compression ratios.

This is a camera that seems to be able to do it all; I have been perfectly satisfied with all the images I have taken in a variety of lights. As with most reasonable cameras you can get perfectly acceptable images in ‘Auto’ mode and the more advanced user can achieve a lot more with the very comprehensive menus. I do notice that saving images both internally and to SD card seems to take several seconds even when you are not taking 5 mega pixel images. If you take several images close together be prepared for around 30 seconds worth or activity, this does not seem to stop you framing and taking further shots. Dabs have the HP R707 for £209.

Link : http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/ho/WF25a/5043-5683-5887-5887-5751003-1891945.html