Labs

The Ixo 334 feels quite solid, and its long, thin shape is reasonably comfortable to use once you get the hang of holding it in your fingertips. There's no optical viewfinder, but the LCD has plenty of pixels and excellent contrast.

Unfortunately, the sparkly plastic finish and garish two-tone logo look a bit cheap. This impression was not dispelled when, after a couple of hours, our unit's automatic lens protector fell off for no apparent reason. This may have been a one-off fault, but doesn't bode well for the camera's durability.

All the controls are within easy thumb-reach, though you sometimes have to click them more than once to get a result. The menu structure is straightforward, but keeps throwing you with nonsensical instructions: to delete an image you're invited to press 'Sel', which turns out to refer to the shutter button. Images are also slow to play back when you use

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the 'view' function.

The manual is thin on useful details (a slightly more helpful PDF comes on CD) and software installation was glitchy, with Windows warning first that the driver wasn't certified and then that there had been a problem with installation.

Shooting controls are a mixed bag. There's no spot exposure option, but you can set a one, two or four-second manual exposure for night shots. Flash options include slow syncro, and there are four white balance modes. The ace up the Ixo's sleeve is a feature you wouldn't expect in this price range: manual focus. Operated via the joypad, it's slow and clunky, but still hugely welcome.

Outdoor shots were generally fair, with natural colour. White balance was uncertain, though, and the Ixo sometimes had difficulty choosing a focus point when there was no clear foreground subject in the photo. Indoor shots were good, with reasonable clarity and confident handling of tungsten.

The camera automatically detects low light conditions and compensates for them with long exposures. Unfortunately, photos taken in low light conditions were still a bit dull.

Macro mode was very effective, giving almost as much detail as the Canon. There's an uncompressed option to preserve quality, though this fits only one image on a 16MB card.

At £129, the Waitec offers a lot for your money. Unfortunately it has too many foibles, such as being unable to pick out a focus point, for us to be able to give it an award.