Product Reviews

The 770 SW is designed to put up with rough treatment. It can survive being dropped up to 1m, crushed by a 100kg weight, plunged 10m underwater and temperatures down to -10°C. This will give comfort to careless people who need a rugged camera, but also to cautious types who leave their camera at home for fear of damaging it.

It also means the 770 SW can be used for deliberate as well as accidental dips underwater. A manometer is built in to measure air or water pressure, so as you compose your shots, you can find out how many metres below - or hundreds of metres above - sea level you are. If you want to dive deeper than 10m, an underwater housing is available for around £160 that withstands depths of up to 40m. The only thing the 770 SW lacks is dust proofing. The integrated lens cover is a fairly standard sliding metal door that is liable to get clogged up with dust or sand. In this respect, the fixed glass window of Pentax's water- and dust-proof Optio W20 (What's New, Shopper March 2007) is a better design.

Otherwise, the 770 SW is a typical

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compact digital camera, although one we would expect to cost around £150. It's available in silver, blue or brown, and at 21mm at its widest point, falls squarely into the ultra-portable category. The 21/2in screen has a generous 230,000-pixel resolution, while the 7-megapixel sensor should be more than enough for most people. However, there are a few less-impressive specifications. The skinny battery lasted for only 306 shots in our test, and the use of xD media means it's expensive to upgrade the paltry 18MB internal memory. As we've noted before, xD is a slow performer, which results in the camera being able to capture only seven shots in continuous mode before it has to stop to wait for the xD card to catch up. In normal use, the camera captured a photo every 2 seconds, but this rose to five seconds in low light. Browsing photos is particularly slow, and is spoilt by text information that appears each time you switch to a different photo.

Image quality had its ups and downs, but by today's high standards the downs were more noticeable. Focus and detail were average at best, but often trailed behind the other cameras we tested this month, particularly towards the edges of photos. High-ISO shots didn't exhibit excessive noise, but noise reduction reduced detail still further. The automatic white balance coped badly with artificial light, and this was particularly frustrating because the preview image was often brighter and better balanced than the resulting image.

There's no doubt that the 770 SW's rugged design is an attractive proposition, but it needs to be built around a better camera to warrant our recommendation.