Pentax has seen a handy gap in the market here, and has launched the Optio RZ10, a cut-priced compact that has a long-zoom wide-angle lens and HD video recording, but does without the extraneous bells and whistles, and as a result costs only around £130. As well as a 10x zoom f/3.2 – f/5.9 lens, equivalent to 28-280mm, the RZ10 is equipped with a 14-megapixel 1/2.33-inch CCD sensor, a 6.86cm (2.7in) 230k LCD monitor, 720p HD video recording and sensor-shift image stabilisation, really a pretty impressive inventory for the price.
Apart from the lacklustre and unsuccessful Optio Z10 launched three years ago, the RZ10 is Pentax's first attempt at a modern long-zoom compact, and it has taken a slightly different approach to most of its market rivals. The camera is available in a range of bright colours as well as black or white, and its design has a slightly toy-like quality that is rather appealing. Upon handling however it turns out to be a solidly made little camera, very easy to use with surprisingly good handling and decent performance.
Design and Features
Although the design looks like it belongs in an Early Learning centre it's actually cleverer than it first appears. The basic shape of the RZ10 is a no-nonsense flat-sided box with heavily rounded corners, a motif of concentric circles and a two-colour palette. It has a simple resin-coated handgrip on the right hand end, although a closer look will reveal that the top-right end of the body flares up slightly, just enough to provide a bit of extra grip, while the layout of the rear controls leaves plenty of room on the back for your thumb.
The build quality is up to Pentax's usual high standard, and although the RZ10 has a plastic body it feels robust and well made. The battery hatch is very flimsy and the tripod bush is soft plastic, but other than that the quality is excellent, with tight panel joins and no embarrassing creaks. The controls are clearly labelled, solidly mounted and well spaced out, so even spade-handed clods like me will have no problem operating them.
The monitor screen could be a little better. It is well recessed to keep it out of harm's way, it has a good fast refresh rate and it is bright enough to use in daylight, with a good anti-glare coating to reduce reflections However the viewing angle is good in every direction except downwards, a problems if you want to hold the camera above your head to shoot over a crowd.
The RZ10 manages without some of the more exotic features of other cameras in its class, but it has all the basics plus a few extras. Shooting modes include Full Auto, program auto and a range of useful scene modes. The control interface is simple but effective, with a three-page main menu, as well as Pentax's programmable Green Button. In its default setting the green button activates an easy-to-use Auto mode with scene recognition, face detection and other automated features, however more sophisticated users can re-purpose the green button to provide fast access to up to four camera parameters, such as ISO setting, white balance, focus area, exposure compensation and more.
Other menu options include adjustable sharpness, saturation and contrast, selectable highlight and shadow correction and blink detection. The face detection option has its own dedicated button, and includes smile capture. There are further options in playback mode, including cropping, resizing, a wide range of digital filter effects and of course Pentax's woderful Frame Composite mode, which can add one of a wide and varied selection of super happy fun-time graphical frames to your picture, should you so desire.
The video recording mode gets the job done, but it's fairly unspectacular by recent standards. It records in 1280 x 720 pixel resolution at 30fps with mono sound, but the optical zoom cannot be used while recording.
Performance and Results
The RZ10 starts up with what can only be described as enthusiasm. It springs to life and can take a picture in a little over two seconds, which is fairly impressive by compact camera standards. In single-shot mode it has a shot-to-shot time of approximately 2.3 seconds, which is also faster than average, especially for a low-cost compact. In standard continuous shooting mode it can maintain just over one frame a second, and it also has three high-speed burst modes which can shoot up to 40 frames, but at 5MP resolution.
The RZ10 could be even faster if only it had a slightly quicker autofocus system. It's not slow enough to be annoying, but there is a bit of a lag, especially in low light. However while it may focus slowly in low light it does focus, despite having no AF assist lamp. It had no trouble focusing in a dimly-lit nightclub bar. The flash is very good, with a maximum range of over five metres and a recycle time of approximately five seconds.
The RZ10 is powered by a higher capacity battery than most recent Pentax compacts, with a rating of 925mAh. This is good for at least 260 shots or 300 minutes of playback, performance which is about average for the class.
This point in the review is where I normally discuss image quality, and it's here that some recent Pentax compacts have come unstuck. Not so the RZ10 however. It produces sharp, well-detailed images with good exposure and colour, the shadow and highlight correction modes give it reasonable dynamic range for a small-sensor 14MP compact, and the lens produces good edge-to-edge sharpness with minimal distortion or chromatic aberration. Images are a little over-sharpened and are very heavily compressed, but the overall result is quite acceptable.
The only tiny fly in the otherwise smooth and revitalising ointment is image noise, the bane of many small-sensor compacts. There is some noise visible in darker areas even at the minimum 80 ISO setting, although it doesn't really become a problem until 400 ISO when detail really starts to fade. Not surprisingly the 3200 and 6400 ISO settings, available at 5MP resolution, are of very poor quality. Nonetheless, considering its versatility, usability, handling, build quality and performance, and above all its price, a bit of high-ISO noise is just about forgiveable.
Verdict
The Pentax Optio RZ10 is a surprisingly good little camera. Although it looks like a toy and is priced to match, it offers superior build quality, good performance and excellent handling, with more features than you'd expect for the money. Image quality is generally good as long as you stay away from the higher ISO settings. All in all, outstanding value for money.
Features Table
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