Pentax Optio W60 review

When we first reviewed the W60 in What’s New, Shopper 250, we concluded that its image quality was nothing special but the waterproofing and sub-£200 price made it good value.

Lining it up against other waterproof cameras confirms both sentiments.

There’s one significant drawback compared with the other waterproof cameras, though: Pentax doesn’t make any claims for its resistance to knocks and bumps. Sure enough, it looks and feels no more robust than an ordinary compact digital camera. The upside is that it’s lighter and a little smaller than the others. It’s waterproof down to a depth of four metres, which is better than most, and is also resistant to sand and dust.

The lens has a generous 5x zoom range starting at a wide-angle 28mm. That’s impressive for a recessed lens, but we found that our fingers sometimes crept into the side of wide-angle shots. The far reaches of the zoom range resulted in barrel and pincushion distortions, but this was only really noticeable when we went looking for it. The centres of photos were impressively sharp, but focus was a little soft towards the corners. Colours were balanced, and automatic exposures well judged. We particularly like the ability to limit the ISO speed to anything from 100 to 1600 in the Auto ISO mode, as it puts the balance of noise against blur under your control. Image noise levels were by no means minimal, but ISO 400 shots were passable.

Video is recorded at 1,280×720 pixels per frame, but only at 15fps, which looked jerky. A more conventional 640×480 30fps mode is also available. Indoor videos were extremely noisy, though, and sound quality was poor. The first clips we shot sounded thin and muffled, and all those captured after we had taken the camera in the water were accompanied by what sounded like a Geiger counter. We can only assume that water doesn’t agree with the camera’s microphone.

The W60 has its limitations but it’s an appealing low-cost option for watersports.