Fujifilm Finepix XP30 travel-optimised digital camera

It's quite common to take a digital camera on holiday, but depending on where your travels take you, your camera may be at risk from the environment you encounter.

Unless, that is, your camera happens to be a Fujifilm Finepix XP30.

The XP30 certainly looks a little different. It's available in a range of bright metallic colours and has a curved body with a fixed lens perched in the top left corner.

Rivets and rubber seals adorn the surface giving away that the device has been designed with durability in mind. Specifically, the XP30 is waterproof to five metres (16ft), shockproof to 1.5 metres (5ft), dustproof and can withstand low temperatures down to -10°C.

On top of this the XP30 has a built-in GPS sensor, which means it can automatically pinpoint where you are on the planet and invisibly add that location data to your photos. It's not vital by any means but it certainly makes an attractive extra feature for adventurous types who want to retrace their steps upon returning home.

Often, features such as these can add a hefty premium to the price but we were pleasantly surprised by the relatively low cost of the XP30. There are certainly cheaper cameras available but compared to other similarly equipped models, it comes out pretty well.

Unfortunately we found that the GPS function brings with it some major problems. Firstly, our review unit often took a very long time to lock onto our location and, as with many sat-nav devices, it failed to find the location at all when we used the camera indoors. Secondly, when the GPS feature was switched it seriously drained the battery.

What really let the XP30 down, however, was its performance as an actual camera. In theory it looked impressive: resolution of 14.2-megapixels for stills and 720p for high-definition video, along with a 5x optical zoom lens and image stabilisation. In practice, we found that colours were wildly unpredictable and lots of noise tended to spoil shots, especially indoors.

Unless you really need the GPS feature and you're on a tight budget, we'd recommend looking elsewhere.