Olympus Mju 720 SW review

Olympus' recent revamp to its range of compacts has resulted in a fresh take on the raft of super-slim pocket cameras featuring folded optics.

With the tiny lens elements housed within the camera body, the new Mju 720 SW is one of the few shockproof and waterproof cameras that don't require a separate housing.

Unlike rivals, such as the Pentax Optio WPi, the Mju 720 SW features a very substantial and robust-looking stainless steel shell. It's waterproof to a significant depth of three metres, and Olympus claims it can survive falls from up to 1.5 metres. Neither claim was tested, although we couldn't resist plunging it into a freshwater aquarium to take a few close-ups. Rather surprisingly, the Mju 720 SW produced some successful underwater shots, albeit of some rather startled-looking inhabitants. A 7cm macro mode on land becomes much more impressive in water.

Shots taken below the surface are generally best served by a specific Underwater Snapshot mode. But, disappointingly, the Mju 720 SW has three additional sub-aqua scene modes intended for use with an optionally available underwater housing. Still, we can see no reason why you can't make use of them without it, providing you're not intending to go scuba diving.

A further 21 shooting modes for everyday use might seem like overkill, but there's a handy Sports option, and the Available Light mode boosts sensitivity all the way up to an astonishing ISO2500. You wouldn't want to make prints at that setting, though. Pixel binning and softening means images don't have anywhere near the detail you would expect, even from a 7.1-megapixel CCD. Manually selecting ISO1600 allows capture at full resolution, although there's little improvement. But that's expected of small-sized sensors in digital compacts.

Operation isn't as slick as it might be, mainly due to the waterproof sealing of the buttons. Although reasonably well shaped and nicely engineered, each button push is accompanied by an unpleasant grating. And we're not keen on the Scene mode button doubling up as a short cut for Programmed Auto exposure and the Digital Image Stabilisation (ISO boost) modes, as it takes far too long to cycle through each option. Otherwise, start-up takes less than a second and back-to-back shooting of around 0.5 second between shots is reasonable. Overall handling isn't very inspiring, though, and at times auto-focusing is impossibly slow.

Olympus' BrightCapture LCD screen technology really comes up trumps under water, and the 2.5-inch screen is pretty effective in other low ambient lighting. Battery life doesn't appear to suffer as a result either; the small rechargeable Li-ion cell supplied achieved over 300 shots on each charge.

In spite of high hopes, we're sad to say picture quality is below average. Prints display excellent colour accuracy in outdoor scenes, and skin tones are particularly attravailable, but indoor images are noisy with quirky colour casts. Plus, most of our test shots were blighted by camera shake. Unless the user overrides the sensitivity, the camera plumps for low ISO's every time, resulting in slow shutter speeds. What's more, the experience is made worse by the absence of any indication that shake may occur.

Ultimately, if taking pictures underwater is a pre-requisite, there are better, if pricier, alternatives - the Mju 720 SW really doesn't float our boat. It's also expensive as a pocket camera. Far superior quality images can be had for much less cash.