Compact camera with high picture quality

Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10

Its dimensions are 72 x 38 x 112.8 millimetres and it weighs less than 190 grams, including its rechargeable lithium-ion battery and a memory card. It seems tailor-made for one-handed operation, with the user's thumb manning the controls.

Keeping things compact, both the memory card and the rechargeable battery are located in the camera's pistol grip, and when the LCD screen is not flipped open, the power button is hidden behind the closed screen.

The dual-purpose camera offers 10-megapixel Jpeg photographs or high definition video with 1,280 x 720-pixel resolution, shooting at 30 frames per second. It also has a 5x optical zoom or a 60x digital zoom. The flip-open LCD screen measures 76 millimetres wide, or about 3 inches, with a screen aspect ratio of 16:9.

It comes with a 40-megabyte internal memory and has an SDHC-compatible memory card slot, allowing for further high-capacity storage.

However, there is no HDMI, no component video out and no microphone or headphone sockets. But it is relatively friendly and easy to use.

The Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 can be activated simply by flipping the screen up and opening it out so it's at an angle of 90 degrees to the body. The on-off button is hidden beneath the LCD screen.

The control buttons are located in a small PAD at the top of the rear handgrip, falling under the thumb. The button for shooting is on the left, while the video record button is on the right. It also has a thin slider for zoom-in and zoom-out. The menu button is beneath and navigated by a four-way joystick. With all the buttons under one thumb, the controls make the camera comfortable and simple to use for long periods.

The Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 also offers multiple scene modes, manual focus and exposure, three filter effects, face detection and sequential stills shooting at up to 7 frames per second. However, the camera has a long shutter lag. It takes a few seconds from pressing the button to image capture, which is far too long.

One of the more interesting features of the Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG10 is a built-in video-editing capability. It's a bit limited, but if users want to create a video on the run, it's actually quite useable.