Review: Pentax Optio M10 digital camera

The M10 is yet another 6-megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom lens aimed at novice users and budget buyers. It has similar, albeit boxier, dimensions to Olympus’ offering.

Power again comes courtesy of two AA batteries (lasting up to 220 shots, according to Pentax), while there’s a slot next to these for a removable SD card (at an additional cost). The larger 22MB built-in memory allows for storage of seven best-quality images.

The camera powers up in two seconds and the 2.5in LCD is bright and clear, which is good news given the absence of an optical viewfinder. The M10 is quick to capture and process shots, but there’s a distinctly audible mechanical sound when the zoom lens is in operation, which we found distracting.

Still, the screen does have a useful dimmer function that adjusts brightness to cope with the viewing conditions at the time. We found it very handy, both indoors and out. There’s also a handy feature called the green mode that resets all the camera settings to their optimum level at a single press of a button, saving users the need to wade through function menus.

Fifteen shooting modes, detailed by easy-to-understand icons, enable beginners to simply point and shoot for the best result with a variety of subject matter.

Unusually for a budget camera, the M10 displays a histogram – a graph showing the areas of brightness across an image – in capture mode. This allows the user to see which portions of the image are properly exposed. Images, therefore, display a good level of detail, while colours are pleasingly warm without being unrealistic.

This article is part of a group test of digital cameras costing £100 or less.
See also:
Acer CE-6430
Benq DC C540
Canon Powershot A430
Fujifilm Finepix A400
Olympus FE-170

A table of features can be read via our pdf download above.