Casio Exilim EX-S880 review

The EX-S880 is remarkably thin at just 17mm from front to back.

In fact, it's almost too thin - the smooth design leaves very little to cling on to and the top-mounted buttons are fiddly. The deep red glossy finish looks great but it picked up quite a few scratches during our review period. A docking station is supplied for charging the battery and transferring images, which is handy when you're at home but more bulk to carry when travelling.

It takes just over a second to switch on and capture a photo. Auto-focusing is extremely quick and browsing pictures is so fast that it resembles an animated movie. The key controls are easy to navigate, and - ignoring the disappointing 0.7fps continuous shooting speed - the overall effect is of an extremely responsive camera. However, we'd advise deactivating the Quick Shutter option, which saves time by not bothering to focus.

There's no shortage of quirky features to keep you occupied and, if you're lucky, improve picture quality. Face detection claims to give priority to predefined friends and family members, although it struggled to spot faces at all. A Dynamic Range option boosts the brightness (and noise) in dark areas of images but doesn't rescue any highlight detail. There are separate buttons for still and video capture, plus scene presets for both, including one that records at the ideal specifications for uploading to YouTube. Another preset buffers video and saves up to five seconds before the record button is pressed, but for some reason it stops a couple of seconds later.

Image quality in our tests was above average for a camera at this price, with sharp detail that trailed off a little at the edges of photos. Colours were rich and flattering, automatic exposure settings were well chosen and noise was bearable at the maximum ISO 800 setting. It can't match Samsung's NV8, but it's likeable nonetheless.