Olympus µ-7010 review

The plastic µ-7010 isn’t as alluring as its aluminium-clad rivals, but there are a few strips of metal to reinforce it and the overall effect is reasonably smart. The 2.7in screen has excellent viewing angles and the backlit buttons add a touch of class to proceedings. We’re delighted to find a 7x zoom lens and optical stabilisation in such a compact, low-price camera. The 170-shot battery life isn’t so impressive, though.

Olympus has finally admitted defeat and will be switching from the slow, expensive xD card format to SDHC in its next batch of cameras. However, the 7010 still uses xD. At least there’s an adaptor included for using a microSD card. Performance was terrible when using xD, with up to eight seconds between shots, but much better with microSD at 2.8 seconds. That’s still nothing to write home about, though. Continuous shooting lasted for just two shots, although a High-Speed mode managed 22 shots at 11fps by dropping to 3 megapixels. The slow performance also accounts for the lack of HD video capture. The 7010’s videos are at the basic VGA resolution with fixed zoom and focus and poor sound, but picture quality was otherwise OK.

Our dislike for compact cameras with pointlessly high resolutions is well documented, but even compared to similar cameras, the 7010’s test shots failed to impress. Focus was poor towards the corners of frames at wide-angle zoom settings, and a little soft across the frame in telephoto shots. The camera struggled to cope with dense textures such as foliage. Shots taken under artificial light had an unpleasant yellow cast, and outdoor ones lacked the vibrancy of other cameras’ shots. As usual for this type of camera, noise was a big problem at high ISO speeds. Although noise reduction did a decent job of hiding it, it also obliterated details. Shots at the top ISO 1600 setting were particularly ugly.

At this price, it’s best to settle for a smaller zoom range in a better all-round camera.