Another great compact camera from Canon, the PowerShot A550 won't compare to some more high-end units, but considering the price tag and the features on offer, it's an excellent value-for-money product.

Users looking for an entry-level digital camera are spoiled for choice at the moment and the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LS80 is one of the better options, providing good quality pictures and a ton of features at a very affordable price.

Nikon's CoolPix L18 is a basic, entry-level compact camera that does little to separate itself from the pack. It will be fine for novice users but anyone more discerning will be frustrated by the image quality and speed issues.

As a budget compact camera, the FinePix A500 is a fairly competant model. It doesn't offer the best image quality in the world, and has some noise issues, but for this price tag it is hard to complain.

A solid entry-level camera, the Canon PowerShot A580 takes good shots and offers most of the features a beginner needs at an affordable price.

The UDC-5M is an improvement on Uniden's seven megapixel UDC-7M, but is still just an average camera, offering decent image quality at a reasonable price.

The DSC-W110 is simple to use and perfect to take to parties, but it's a very automatic camera and its pictures tend to look soft.

The Canon PowerShot E1 is an impressive entry-level compact camera aimed primarily at kids and skint teens. It offers a nice array of features for the asking price and takes adequate photos to boot. All in all, a solid offering.

If you're after a point and shoot, happy snap camera, Samsung's L730 might suit you well. It does have some image quality issues but it packs in all the features you'd want as well as a pretty good video mode.

If the battery life was a little better this would be an outstanding product, but as it stands at this price for a 5 megapixel model you really can't go wrong.