Review: Ricoh Caplio RR660 digital camera

Ricoh's latest Caplio digital compact camera brags a wide array of features while keeping the cost down to a respectable £130.

The Ricoh Capilo RR660 has no viewfinder but instead relies on a 6cm screen that occupies most of its back panel. The display is bright and is relatively clear even in strong sunlight.

The size of the display reduces the available space for control buttons, though and the thumbwheel, zoom toggle (3x optical) and four other buttons are thumbnail-only, unless you have very small fingers.

On top of the camera's body is the shutter release button and a thumbwheel for selecting the photo shooting mode, which also has the on-off button set in its centre.

The RR660 provides six photo modes: auto, program, portrait, landscape, sport and night, which are pretty self-explanatory. For most shots it can be left in auto, but you can also use burst mode to take three pictures continuously and auto bracket mode to take three shots within a set exposure range.

It’s about time digital camera makers, including Ricoh, increased the amount of internal memory in their cameras. 16Mb might have been okay when a good quality camera produced two megapixel images, but six-megapixel images are megabyte hungry and the Ricoh will only store two before filling up.

It's possible to reduce the image resolution to 4Mb or 2Mb to squeeze more shots in, but then why buy a six megapixel camera?

There's an SD memory card slot for upping the memory to 1Gb, which slides in under a cover, which also reveals twin AA batteries.

It doesn't come with rechargeable batteries so factor the cost of replacing the AA's after a few days shooting.

Image quality is generally very good, with a high level of detail afforded by the large image sensor and a natural colour balance in both outdoor and indoor shots.

Shooting in low light produced a bit of image noise, but this is expected in a camera at this price.

For the money you’re getting a handy digital compact camera, but it will need to be accompanied by an SD card of at least 128Mb.

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