As far as looks go, this thing is a total 10. It has a beautiful full metal casing, with not ONE plastic part to be seen. This camera fits perfectly in your pants pocket (or in your purse), so you can take it anywhere.. and I mean anywhere, even underwater. As it stands, right out of the box, you can take it up to 10ft underwater without worrying about it getting hurt. I don’t know how useful this is for the everyday person, but if you drop it in the toilet, no worries, it can take it. Even if, when you drop it in the toilet, it falls 5 feet first and hits the porcelain, that’s okay, ’cause it’s shock resistant up to five feet. The screen on this baby is a full 2.5inches, which takes up a majority of the rear of the camera, and adds to the positive esthetics. All of the buttons have a nice feel, giving off a reassuring click when you give them a press. The flap that opens to reveal the USB port and the flap that opens to show the battery and memory card are both designed very well. They open and close nicely, and securely close shut. There is rubber inside both of them, which they suggest you replace yearly, that keeps water from getting in. Man, let me tell you, I love this all-metal design and brushed aluminum mixed with shiny stainless steel look.

The zoom capability on this camera is really cool for its size. You can get up to 3X optical zoom on this camera, and the lens doesn’t even stick out of the camera. It has a completely internal lens. The non-extrusive lens may not be great for anything other than keeping it waterproof, but I think the fact they can get 3X optical out of a lens that doesn’t even stick out is pretty amazing. One of the most positive things about having the internal lens is, if you drop it (from up to 5 feet) it’s not going to damage it. Try dropping any other digital camera from five feet while it’s zoomed it, and you’ll most likely have one sad, malfunctioning piece of equipment on your hands.

If you took the time to read all of the features and specifications, you saw how many settings this camera has. Unlike most point-and-shoot cameras in this price range, you can really customize how the picture is taken. There are all kinds of ISO settings and shutter speeds, and this camera has a sweet burst mode which you can take up to eleven photos in a row with, so you can get that perfect picture. This camera has multiple flash modes, 19.1MB of internal memory for when you need it in a pinch, and 28 different “shooting modes.” This camera has all of the features anyone could want out of a camera in this price range. I simply don’t know what more you could ask for as far as features go. I could take a bunch of photos of the camera in use, but that’s a lot of work that I don’t have to do, because Olympus already did it for me. Check out this link to play around with the camera, virtually.

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