Ricoh CX4 review

Ricoh deserves praise for sticking with a 10-megapixel sensor, when most of its competitors succumb to ill-advised marketing pressures – fitting 12-, 14- and even 16-megapixel sensors in their compact cameras. As a result, there’s less noise and more detail in low-light shots than most compact ultra-zoom cameras manage. It’s not quite up to the standards of the Ixus 1000 HS, though. We put that down to Canon’s superior noise reduction as much as anything. The CX4’s pictures remained sharp and detailed at ISO 400, but at ISO 800 and 1600, fine details took on a strange blocky appearance. Turning up the noise reduction to Max improved matters greatly, although this option isn’t available in continuous or scene preset modes.

Digital correction is used to counteract lens distortions, but it’s a little distracting that this isn’t applied to the preview image – as a result, the preview and captured photo are slightly different. Distortion correction isn’t applied at all when shooting in continuous mode or for video capture. We also experienced a bug whereby the processing over-corrected and turned barrel distortion into heavy pincushion distortion, although it only happened on one occasion.

Otherwise, image quality was excellent, with highly effective automatic white balance and well-judged automatic exposures. The only exception was for flash photography, which overexposed nearby subjects and used unnecessarily high ISO speeds, resulting in noisy pictures. Unlike the CX3, the CX4’s lens maintained sharp focus at the full zoom extension. Video capture is at 720p and both picture and sound quality were high. Focus and zoom are locked during capture, though, and adjusting the zoom rocker applies an ugly digital zoom.

The CX4 can’t match the Ixus 1000 HS for photo or video quality, but there’s not much in it for photos. Its controls are more plentiful and accessible, its screen is more detailed, its continuous performance is twice as fast and it doesn’t suffer the Ixus’s poor battery life. We’d still stick with the Ixus on balance, but the CX4 takes a close second place.