GE E1050TW Cary NC

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Manufacturer: General Electric
http://www.ge.com/

Supplier: Great Digital Deals
www.greatdigitaldeals.co.uk

Price: £127 (£150 inc VAT)

Rating: 3/6

Features that were only to be found on digital SLRs this time last year are now almost standard on digital compacts. They all have high-ISO sensitivity settings, allowing for shots in low light without the flash, and all but one of the cameras here - the GE model - has optical image stabilisation to deal with camera-shake. Also, the megapixel ratings are enormous, and 3in screens are becoming the norm. In short, it's pretty hard to buy a bad digital camera these days, but some are of superior quality and better value than others.

If you've recently bought a fighter jet or industrial solar-energy installation, you'll be familiar with General Electric, but this is the first time we've seen one of its newly released line of digital cameras. And it's not a bad first effort with a 5x optical zoom, including a 28mm-equivalent setting when fully zoomed out for true wide-angle shots.

There's also a 3in touchscreen in a case only 93mm wide. Touch control works well and it's arguably more intuitive than Sony's efforts with the T70. There's an HD movie mode capable of 720p recording at 25fps, plus an HDMI connector for viewing the result directly on an HDTV. The design isn't cutting-edge though - it put us in mind of a model from three or four years ago - and there's no optical image stabilisation.

But we can forgive that on a camera at this price. What's harder to forgive is image quality, which is some way behind the likes of Nikon and Canon, with noticeably lower levels of detail and definition, even at ISO 100. It probably won't worry the casual snapper, but anyone looking more closely will find that it can't compete with the Sony T70.

Sony Cybershot T70
Nikon Coolpix S610c
Nikon Coolpix P6000
Canon Digital Ixus 980 IS

Back to: Compact Digital Cameras

Author: Darien Graham-Smith, Mike Jennings & Matthew Sparkes

GE E1050TW