HP Photosmart R717

HP's latest offering in its Photosmart range is the R717.With a fairly chunky yet sturdy design, it sports a 6-megapixel sensor (which allows for A4-sized prints), 3x optical zoom and 32Mb of internal memory. An SD card slot is at hand for adding further memory.

Buttons are clearly labelled and sensibly placed, so it doesn't take long to get to grips with the R717. Browse through the menu system and you'll find in-depth help on each of the functions. You'll also find guides to shooting, printing and much more, all housed within the camera.

There's a good range of manual controls, including varying exposure levels, shutter speeds and white balance. Image quality is about what we expected; colours were vibrant and well saturated, while most shots were well exposed.

Shooting in low light resulted in a fair amount of image noise, but this is usual for a camera of this ilk.

Close-up photography is limited somewhat by a 14cm macro mode. At this distance, you'll lose out on a lot of detail; most digital cameras can get at least as close as 6cm to their subjects.

HP has included an Adaptive Lighting mode with the R717. This attempts to improve detail in shadowed areas in otherwise brightly lit scenes, for example in a sunny outdoors shot.

Although image quality does suffer a little, it's a useful feature to have and, if you're only printing 6x4in photos, you're unlikely to notice the drop in quality.

Other features include a 30-frames-per-second movie mode with audio (although only at a low 320 x 240 pixel resolution), and a post-shooting redeye removal tool that, in testing, was a bit hit and miss.

The Photosmart R717 is clearly aimed at newcomers to digital photography. The on-board help means you don't need to carry the manual around, while the menu system is easy to navigate.

If you're serious about your photography, you might be a little disappointed with the image quality, but for those planning to print mainly 6x4in photos it will do just fine. At just £163, it's a real bargain.

Also consider:
Fujifilm Finepix F455