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.

The Powershot A710 IS captures great pictures, operates extremely quickly and sports an attractive design that will appeal to many people. It does have some minor noise issues, but the rich feature set and quick burst mode make it an ideal choice for the budding photographer.

While the IXUS 900 Ti is a fairly good compact camera, it suffers from some fringing and noise issues that mean it isn't quite on par with some of Canon's other units.

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 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 great advanced camera that offers almost all the features you'd expect in a sturdy and stylish case.

While the FZ50 is a reasonably strong advanced camera, a combination of its size, price tag and issues at high sensitivities mean it is only suited to certain buyers.

The IXUS 850 IS is a very speedy camera that sports a stylish design and offers good colour representation. Image quality problems including chromatic aberation and noise at higher ISO levels do however impact on it's performance.

While the form factor of the IXUS i7 is quite appealing, the image noise has a severe impact on the picture quality.

The PowerShot A640 is an excellent all round advanced camera. While its features aren't quite as robust as some more expensive models, for this price tag, it's a good buy.

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.

The image stabilisation technologies combined with the large zoom and above average image quality make the TZ3 a great compact camera, particularly for travelers.