Olympus X-890 review

The X-890 doesn't slot neatly into Olympus's established Stylish, Easy or Creative ranges of digital compacts, and doesn't even appear on the company's website. It's exclusive to Jessops, and you'll find further details on the retailer's website.

We love the design. With silver lines that break up the matt black body, it's like a piece of abstract minimalist art. It sounds less pleasant than it looks, though, and makes a high-pitched beep when any button is pressed. Thankfully, you can turn this off. At the back there's a 2.7in screen and a basic smattering of controls. Photographic options are limited, with no continuous drive, metering or autofocus options. Flash settings, exposure compensation, ISO speed and white balance presets are available, but only in the Program mode, not iAuto.

The camera uses slow, expensive xD cards, although it comes with a microSD-to-xD adaptor. However, performance was poor even with a fast microSD card. Autofocus was slow and prone to failing in low light, and we measured an average of 4.3 seconds between shots. We suspect that the lack of a continuous mode is due to the fact that it would have been embarrassingly slow.

Image quality was just as disappointing. Even outdoor shots taken in bright sunlight exhibited vague details, blotchy colours in shade and a skewed white balance. We can't remember the last camera we saw that struggled with white balance in sunlight. There was also purple fringing around dark subjects set against a bright background, such as trees against the sky. The camera chose inappropriate ISO speeds in low light, resulting in blurry shots indoors without the flash. We had to change the ISO speed manually or switch to the Stabilisation mode, but this is something that most casual photographers won't think to do.

The X-890 looks smart, but there's no other reason to choose it over Panasonic's cheaper LS85.

Author: Ben Pitt