A solid camera that has some nice features and takes reasonable quality pictures.

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.

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.

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

While image quality isn't the FX33's strong point, it still produces perfectly fine small prints, and thus its novice-friendly feature set and speedy operation makes it a good choice for those after a happy snap camera.

A very small, very stylish camera that is a great offering for beginner photographers.

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.

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

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.

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.

The IXUS 960 IS is a great compact camera from Canon. Consumers looking for a high-end camera to back up their SLR or to take their photography to the next level will love this unit.