A rare misstep for Canon, the PowerShot A450 captures exceptionally accurate colours, but falls down in several other areas, resulting in less than crisp pictures.

With its sleek design and interesting control scheme, as well as a few nifty features, the Samsung NV24HD is a fairly solid compact camera.

Apart from not being a particularly speedy camera, the M310W acquits itself admirably.

Although it's quite bulky, the S80 offers an excellent list of features for a compact digital camera.

Another fantastic compact from Canon, the IXUS 980 IS takes everything that was great about past units and adds manual shooting modes, a very smooth design and a higher resolution sensor, making this one of the best high-end compacts on the market.

While the FX50 did exhibit a lot of noise, it was extremely small and it performed well in all our other tests, so unless you're magnifying your shots to a great degree it may be a contender.

Olympus' Tough 1030SW doesn't take massive leaps ahead of its predecessors, but it does introduce a few minor improvements and remains a good choice for users after a unit that can take more than its fair share of punishment.

Nikon's CoolPix S710 would be a fantastic compact if not for its incredibly slow performance. Its shots look good, with excellent detail and well-balanced colours. It also sports a bevy of nifty features. However, the speed issues really damage the user experience.

While it does offer some nifty features, the FX07 produces noisy pictures no quite on par with other competing models.

Much lighter and smaller point-and-shoot cameras are available, but the S60 is a great choice for people seeking a camera that has powerful creative controls.

The PowerShot S70 costs more than many point-and-shoots, but the payoff of a wide-angle lens, 7.1 megapixels, and superior picture quality will be worth it for advanced hobbyists.

A good, high-end compact camera, the Samsung NV 100 HD has a few image quality issues but they can be overlooked. The manual shooting modes combined with the touch-screen interface will be enough to attract some users. Its price tag is perhaps a little high, but touch screens don't come cheap.