Casio Exilim EX-TR100 slim digital compact camera

The very unusual design of Casio's metal-bodied EX-TR100, also known as the ‘Tryx', has more in common with smartphones than with most compact cameras.

It's only 15mm thick and comes with a 3in touch-sensitive screen and just two physical controls, the power and shutter buttons.

The camera body sits within a metal outer frame which can be flipped outwards and rotated through a full circle. This not only means an almost unlimited number of positions, but the frame may be used as a grip to reduce blur when shooting handheld. We also found it very effective for achieving wobble-free video clips - the TR100 can record high-definition video at the 1080p resolution, as well as its 12-megapixel still shots.

There's an option to shoot at a lower resolution, or to shoot at a very low resolution but a much increased frame rate of 240 frames per second. When replayed at normal speed this provides a slow motion effect, so it's useful for action shooting.

Unfortunately, you won't be able to get very close to the action as the camera's design has its downsides. There's no optical zoom, just a digital zoom that degrades the picture quality, so the lens is fixed at the equivalent of a wide-angle 21mm in old 35mm film terms. That's very useful for landscapes but lends closer portraits a slightly distorted ‘fish-eye' effect. It was also too easy to accidentally cover the lens with a finger when twisting the camera's screen.

The EX-TR100 has a camcorder-style LED spotlight instead of a flash, which has to be activated manually using the touch-screen menu. Once it was on, it stayed on, which drained the battery. We managed just 200 shots from a full charge, which was disappointing. That said, the bright lens means there's less need for a flash in darker conditions as the lens automatically lets in more light than those on other cameras.

Ultimately, however, we found that the picture quality wasn't very much better than is available from a decent smartphone, with purple fringing well in evidence. Overall, then, the TR100 puts style too much over substance.