Labs

Olympus claims that the FE-230 is 16.5mm thick, which would make it the slimmest camera we have seen. We measured 19mm at its thickest point, but this is still extremely slim, especially for such an affordable camera. There's no room inside for AA batteries so a rechargeable Li-ion cell is supplied, but its small dimensions mean that the camera's battery life is below average at 296 shots. The 2.5in screen dominates the back of the camera, but there's enough room for

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a mode dial and a decent set of buttons with a nice positive action to them.

Squeezing a camera into such a tiny case is a fine achievement, but it's a shame that the camera Olympus chose to squeeze inside is essentially an FE-210. All the problems outlined in the FE-210's review apply to this model, including extremely slow performance, soft focus and limited user controls that leave no means of fixing white balance flaws. Another annoying problem with both cameras is that the flash reverts to Auto mode every time you change mode or turn the camera on. The only FE-210 flaw that Olympus has fixed in the FE-230 is that you can record video files with sound, but with a maximum recording time of 15 seconds at the maximum quality setting, this has few practical uses.

The FE-230 is impressively compact and can take some attractive photos, but its image quality is below the standard of most cameras here and its performance is frustratingly slow. Considering that it's one of the most expensive cameras in this group, it's particularly poor value.