A brilliantly designed unit, the MJU 780 will please a variety of consumers with its optical image stabilisation, 5x optical zoom and high ISO sensitivities. Its pictures aren't the best on the market but they are more than adequate for most uses.

Kodak's Easyshare V1073 is a good all-round compact combining nice images with some nifty features and a touch-screen interface.

While the design and feature set are fairly attractive, the Kodak EasyShare M883 unfortunately suffers from the same image quality issues that plagued its predecessor. If you're making small prints and want a simple to use point-and-shoot then this may be a reasonable choice, but otherwise you should probably look elsewhere.

Olympus's MJU 820 doesn't capture brilliant pictures, but its combination of a stylish and sturdy design along with some nifty features and funky guide mode make it a reasonable happy-snap camera for novice users.

The MJU 760 is a strong compact camera with particular appeal for beginner photographers thanks to Olympus' guide system and its intuitive interface. Combine these with good picture quality and a classy design, and have you a great product.

It doesn't take the best pictures on the market but they are fine for small- and medium-sized prints and the combination of style, strength and features makes the MJU 840 an attractive all-purpose point-and-shot.

Small and powerful -- thanks to an 8.1-megapixel sensor -- the P50 is suitable for almost all situations and it even has a decent manual mode to tinker with.

It's small, can take good looking 10-megapixel-sized images and it's easy to use. It'll struggle a little in low-light conditions, as most cameras do, but it's still a decent compact camera for all occasions.

Another great tough model from Olympus, the Tough 850SW only improves on its predecessor in a few small ways but it is still one of the best options if you're after a camera that can take a little more grief than normal.

While the pictures could be a little sharper, the Digital IXUS 75 excelled in all other areas and is a brilliant choice if you're after an all purpose camera to throw in your pocket and forget about.

The UDC-7M performed poorly in almost all of our tests, producing noisy, soft shots that had noticeable haloing. We'd recommend you steer clear of this unit if you're after a compact camera.

A low end six megalpixel camera, the F470 is a decent but not outstanding model that fails to differentiate itself from the myriad of compacts on the market.