Labs

At 122g, the BenQ is one of the lightest cameras on test. Add 23MB of integrated memory, and its paper specifications make it appear tempting. One thing specs don't reveal, though, is how it feels in your hand, and we were a little underwhelmed: it simply lacks the solid feel of some rivals.

There's a similar high-resolution 2.5in TFT to the Acer on the rear, but the sparse buttons make it seem more basic than the CU-6530. However, scrolling through the menus reveals a good range of controls. There's multipattern, centre-weighted and spot metering, multi-area, continuous, spot and manual focusing, plus pan focus (close and distant subjects together). Sharpness, saturation and contrast can all be adjusted, while a function button gives quick access to white balance, flash modes, resolution and quality options. The direction pad adds macro, self-timer and shooting mode controls.

Given the 6-megapixel

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sensor and 3x Pentax zoom lens, we expected decent images, but were disappointed. Outdoors in good light, exposures were reasonably good, although images were spoiled by heavy-handed compression. Viewing at 100%, images showed artefacts and therefore lacked fine detail. Some noise was evident too, but fortunately few chromatic aberrations.

Indoors, the X600 was slow to focus (despite the AF assist lamp), but again, high compression meant shots were some of the worst we saw. For macro shots too the BenQ was disappointing. Colours were unrealistic, and it was only able to focus up to 15cm away from objects, which meant it couldn't get as close as the Acer or Canon.

Another area where the X600 struggled was with movies. Indoors, it has to boost the ISO to the maximum, which led to a lot of noise, while in good light image quality was nothing special. The frame rate wasn't as smooth as the Canon's and audio quality was poor too.

The only time the BenQ impressed us was in the night shot. In the night scene mode, the X600 delivered a sharp shot with the correct white balance. It was slightly overexposed with some evident noise, but it was a better effort than other cameras. In fact, white balance was reasonably accurate in all our tests and noise relatively low. But at ISO 400 and 800, the abundance of noise makes images unusable.

All in all, the main problem for the X600 is the Sony. It costs £1 less yet delivers far better quality images and superior macro and movie modes.