Olympus SH-25MR review

This is one of the best compact cameras around for video capture too. Its 1080p clips were extremely sharp and autofocus was smooth, responsive and easy to control via the touchscreen. A few subtle clicks and whirrs from the lens were picked up in the soundtrack, but sound quality was otherwise excellent.

Image noise in photos was reasonably low for a 16-megapixel sensor, but higher than from cameras with more modest resolutions. Indoor photographs were decent, though, with smooth colours once photos had been resized to fit a screen.

Rival cameras are better in low light but, for us, the SH-25MR is the right side of acceptable.

Its outdoor image quality was also decent, but the difference between the best and worst cameras is much smaller here; the SH-25MR’s ranks somewhere in the middle and is perfectly acceptable.

The 12.5x zoom range is easily outgunned by rival cameras, but focus at the full zoom extension is extremely sharp.

The only significant trade-off is the relatively small zoom range. Despite that, it maintained sharp focus at the full zoom extension, so the practical difference between this and Olympus’s 24x-zoom SZ-31MR isn’t as big as the numbers suggest.

There are cameras with better image quality, but the ability to shoot photos and videos simultaneously shouldn’t be underestimated. We’d be tempted to pay more for the Olympus SZ-31MR and its bigger zoom and wheel for adjusting settings, but we’re also quite taken by the SH-25MR’s GPS functions. Due to its much lower price, the SH-25MR comes out on top.