At £90, this super-svelte snapper is little short of a bargain. A 14.1-megapixel sensor, 5x optical zoom and the promise of HD movie recording sounds too almost good to be true.

Naturally we were eager to get our hands on the Casio Exilim EX-ZS10 and find out whether it lived up to our expectations, or embodied the maxim 'you get what you pay for'. It turns out it was a bit of both.

First up we'll look at the ZS10's movie mode. It has two quality settings -- 640x480 and 1,280x720 pixels, each at 30 frames per second. We opted for the latter. The ZS10 won't film anything longer than 29 minutes, regardless of spare capacity on your memory card, so bear this in mind of you plan on filming a graduation, nativity play or other crucial event. There's no such limit on audio-only recordings. Let's see how the footage turned out.

Our chosen resolution may well have matched HD, but the results didn't live up to our expectations. Static shots demonstrated 'movement' across flat surfaces, even in good light, where the camera applied some tight compression. And to get around the problem of the loud zoom action, which might otherwise have featured on the soundtrack, Casio has disabled the optical zoom, leaving you only the digital option. So, the further you zoom, the more you degrade your captured scene.

Source: CNET UK