After a couple of years of repeatedly taking other peoples cameras at events to take lots of photos with, I was bought this camera for my birthday (at the price of £70), as well as a 4 GB SD card so I would never run out of photos to take, as well as a case, both of which I would recommend getting with the camera.

The camera itself has a 10.2mp resolution and 3x zoom and an LCD screen to clearly view what you take photos of. The camera also comes with a plug-in charger for the rechargeable battery, a USB cable, warranty for a year and the instruction manual.

Straight away I found the camera very easy to use. Being small enough to fit in my pocket made it very easy to carry around. As soon as I turn the camera on, without fiddling with any of the settings, I was able to take some very handy point-and shoot photos, and It automatically utilises the face recognition ability. Furthermore the auto-focus was quite reliable, which allowed me to take some nice photos.

Delving deeper into the camera, there is a whole host of things it offers. The camera has numerous settings depending on the type of photo you want, including snow, beach, flowers and party, and will automatically recognise the setting when you take the picture. However it works a lot better if you choose the mode yourself, and that takes seconds to do. The optical zoom is perfect and sacrifices none of the quality of the photo, and perfect for the casual photographer that I am.

To test the camera out, I decided to take it to the Botanical Gardens to hopefully take some nice photos, and it didn't disappoint. If there is lots of natural light, the photos are nice and sharp and vivid in colour, and the macro mode is brilliant when it comes to taking pictures of flowers. I found that in low light the photos become a bit grainy, and the flash is only useful over a very small range. Furthermore the party mode for indoors didn't produce photos as well as I expected, but were still more than adequate! The sport mode was good for general action of a football match, but was blurry when focused on individuals. When it came to the firework mode, it produced good photos, but a bit of fiddling with the exposure time myself meant I could produce better results with my own settings. Though it would be nicer to make those settings more accessible, as they are hidden under a few menus!

As for the other facilities, I didn't find the panoramic more to work too well. It required taking a photo, and then having the edge of that photo as a reference for the next photo, and you could have a third shot as well. It might have been due to an unsteady hand, but however hard I tried, I could never quite get it to work, and it was noticeable where the photos joined when transferred to a computer. The video quality is adequate for personal use, and sounds and looks clear. Be warned that you can't zoom in whilst the video is recording, which is a minor annoyance.

For the camera itself, the screen is amazingly crisp, and an accurate representation of the photo it is going to take. It is lightweight and, as I had it in black, looked very sleek. The battery life is good enough for a couple of weeks of casual use, which is definitely a good thing. I personally never used the software to download the photos to the computer, using the SD card directly instead. I would recommend getting some extra memory in the form of an SD card, otherwise you will be limited to 5-6 photos.

Overall, for the price, it is a very good camera for the casual photographer, with the ability to take the occasional stunning photo and many very nice photos, yet very simple to use as a point and click camera.