Toshiba PDR-M1

Over the past few months, we've seen the big players upping the stakes in the digital camera arena. Last month saw Canon's PowerShot Pro 70 (reviewed issue 54, p172) take its place in the A List as the best digital camera we've seen. The superiority of the Canon was preceded by a highly competent but expensive Minolta DimÅge EX Zoom 1500 (reviewed issue 53, p177), which had the best quality we'd ever seen at the time of its review. We've also seen highly creditable results from Olympus with its excellent Camedia C-840L (reviewed issue 50, page 146), a camera that held the A List recommendation for several months, before losing out only last month to the Canon.

Unfortunately, all of these cameras weigh in on the wrong side of £500 including VAT. If the concept of digital photography appeals, but your budget won't stretch that far and you're willing to compromise on image quality, you could be forgiven for thinking that the digital camera industry isn't very interested. Toshiba, with its new PDR-M1 shows this to be untrue: its latest offering - a 1.5 million pixel digital camera - retails for the comparatively cheap price of £340.

First impressions are good: it certainly comes across as a camera that has been well designed. I was particularly impressed with its mode selector, which takes the form of a dial at the top-right side of the unit. Simply twist it to select capture, setup, PC connection or time delay modes. It's as simple and intuitive as it sounds. The LCD panel and its associated user interface are also up to the same standard. Although the display itself is small, it's easy to navigate the text menus and carry out any major or minor changes with the minimum of fuss. Taking photos is just as easy: simply open the sliding integrated lens cap, switch the camera on, select capture mode and you're away. My only reservation about the process is that it takes a while to 'warm up' when first switched on.

Next it's on to the camera's image and optical quality. It's here that the differences between the cameras I mentioned at the beginning of this review and the cheaper Toshiba become apparent. First, the PDR-M1 is fitted with a digital zoom as opposed to a true optical one. Though it may sound more dramatic, the 2x zoom on the Toshiba is nothing better than loading your image into Photoshop, or any other decent photo-editing application, and using its magnifier tool.

The feature also becomes something of an annoyance if you zoom in while using the camera's standard optical viewfinder. The images you see in the viewfinder and what's eventually stored on the 4Mb SmartMedia card aren't the same. That said, the LCD is on hand to help out in these situations, and its respectably nippy refresh rate makes it comfortable to use in most situations.

When I examined the PDR-M1's output, I compared it to other cameras we've tested in the same price range. At first glance I was quite impressed. The Toshiba is capable of producing some well-coloured and detailed images. Skies were a realistic blue, grass a convincing green, and blacks were good and dark. However, the image quality doesn't look quite so good when it's compared to the output achieved with the Casio QV-700SX (reviewed issue 52, p180). This is a camera capable of stunning results and one that, if you shop around, can be picked up for around £320. Without even having to zoom in close, it was immediately apparent that the Toshiba's results were markedly poorer. They suffered, in particular, from jagged curved edges whereas the same details in the Casio's images were smooth.