Olympus VR-310 digital camera

It is not often we find a camera like this: it's a metal-built £99 pocket model only 2cm deep, at its slimmest, but it fits in a 10x optical zoom lens. This lens starts out at a wide-angle 24mm (in old 35mm film terms) and goes up to 240mm at maximum zoom.

We reviewed the smart silver version, with red, purple and black editions also available. The control layout was straightforward, with just the shutter release, power and zoom controls on the top plate. It felt reasonably solid, though not obviously metallic.

The back panel includes a 3in screen and a special record button to activate the high-definition video, in the 720p resolution, as well as playback and menu controls. These controls were small and required thumbnail precision. We'd have preferred a physical mode dial for selecting shooting options – instead, selections are made on screen by toggling left and right between modes presented at the top. It takes 14-megapixel still photos.

As well as an iAuto mode that will recognise scenes and subjects and change settings accordingly, there's a fully featured Program mode plus panorama, scene modes and Magic Filter options. These digital effects are fun, allowing a brightly coloured Pop Art look to be given to a subject, for example, or old-fashioned pinhole camera-like corner shading 14 mp.

Otherwise, this cheap camera's specifications are unsurprisingly modest: light sensitivity is capped the ISO1600 level and we found that low-light photos had lots of noise if we went above the lower ISO400. We also found it too easy to accidentally cover the flash when gripping the camera in the right hand, with the result that half the image could be thrown into shadow, resembling an old-fashioned film processing fault.

The camera is protected against the blurring effect of camera shake thanks to built-in image stabilisation but we struggled to get a sharp picture when fully zoomed-in. When shooting video we could use the zoom or record sound, but not simultaneously.

Though it achieved some colourful results, bugbears such as very noticeable purple fringing, as well as image softness mean that, though cheap, the VR-310 is no bargain.