Product Reviews

The ultra-compact Z10fd is the cheeky little brother to the suave and sophisticated Z100fd. Both are available in a range of colours, but the choice of black, blue, green, olive, red, orange and pink and the curvy design give the Z10fd an air of youthful exuberance rather than luxury. The specifications are more modest, with a 7-megapixel sensor, 3x zoom and run-of-the-mill 2in, 150,000-pixel screen, but none of these figures should put casual photographers off.

We're pleased to see that the Z100fd's dumbed-down menu system isn't employed here. The Z10fd has dedicated buttons to activate face detection and an anti-blur mode, while more conventional controls such as exposure compensation and ISO speed are fairly quick to access through the Menu button. The zoom control isn't as obvious as it could be - it takes just a few seconds to get used to, but might confuse other people when they're taking a quick snap for you.

Performance is a little disappointing at around 2.5 seconds between shots. The continuous mode is a misnomer, as it managed only one shot every two seconds. Browsing photos is ridiculously

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slow, due to the use of lethargic transitions to move from one image to another. Thankfully, you can turn these off. The li-ion battery is about the size of an After Eight mint and would struggle to power the camera for a day of enthusiastic shooting.

Image-quality tests revealed a number of problems. None was fatal, but when combined they resulted in disappointing photos. Exposures were well balanced and bright but colours were a little washed out at times. Focus and detail were below what we expect from a 7-megapixel camera, and nowhere near the standard set by Samsung's similarly priced NV8 (reviewed opposite). Even after resizing both cameras' output to 1-megapixel images on a PC screen, the Samsung's shots looked more detailed. Chromatic aberrations were often clearly visible, producing a halo of discoloration along the edges of highly contrasting subjects.

The camera jumped to unnecessarily high ISO speeds in medium light, increasing image noise. Low-light shots looked reasonable at first glance, but flaws such as spidery edges, messy fine textures and blotchy areas of shade revealed that noise reduction processing was working overtime. The f/3.7 maximum aperture doesn't help, letting in less light than the f/2.8 aperture most cameras offer. This means that the Z10fd must almost double its ISO or shutter speed to compensate, increasing either noise or the likelihood of blur due to camera shake.

Despite these issues, the Z10fd produces pictures that many casual snappers would be happy with. The lack of detail is particularly disappointing, though. Samsung's NV8 demonstrates that you don't need to settle for anything less than excellent image quality around this price.