Pentax Optio M60 camera

Small and stylish with a 10-megapixel sensor, it’s a surprise that the Optio M60 from Pentax costs just £99.

With so little space to play with, Pentax has done a reasonable job of making the buttons small without hampering usability and the camera feels comfortable in the hand.

The company has also managed to cram in a 5x optical zoom lens, which is no mean feat with a camera this small.

Startup times are impressive and the Optio M60 can capture a shot within four seconds of being switched on.

Those who like a bit more control over their photography can adjust the white balance to one of four presets or even set it manually.

Various focusing modes are also on offer, along with exposure compensation and manual ISO settings from 64 up to an extremely noisy 6,400.

As usual, Pentax has gone overboard with the scene modes. There are 24, including Pet, Kids and Flower, but during testing we found the Auto mode did a good job in most situations.

Face and smile detection both worked well; when activated, the latter will automatically take a shot as soon as a toothy grin is revealed. Pentax has also included blink detection, which flashes up a warning if it thinks your subject had their eyes shut. In our tests, though, this feature was somewhat unreliable.

Considering how cheap the Optio M60 is, photo quality is reasonable. When viewed close up, however, a fair amount of noise and compression was noticeable, which wasn’t helped by the camera frequently opting for unnecessarily high ISO settings, even in broad daylight.

At less than £100, the Optio M60 has some useful features and, although image quality isn’t perfect, it’s a good compact digicam.