With a 5x wide-angle zoom lens, a large 3'' LCD touch-screen, HD video mode (720p) and face detection, General Electric's E1050TW has all the ingredients to be a successful compact for family use.

Handling

The GE E1050TW comes without whistles and bells and has a pretty standard design with a large, clunky case that weighs 180 g including battery and memory card.  That said, its metal finish feels reassuringly tough and the extra weight reinforces this impression. 

The controls have been stripped back to the bare minimum, with the power switch and shutter release only joined by a zoom control and a button to activate the playback mode.  There are no controls on the front, and the whole of the back of the camera is taken up by the touchscreen.  Its 230x400 pixel resolution is a little stingy for a screen of this size, making it tough to spot the details in some photos.

Problems with the screen don't stop there, though, as we also found it to have very narrow viewing angles and sunlight reflects off it when outside.  The touchscreen interface, though, works quite well.  The different functions are responsive and make for an easy learning curve.  Every setting has to be confirmed by pressing OK, a step which we found a little unnecessary.

Up against the clock, the GE E1050TW is just about ok: two seconds to start up and one second for autofocus are good results, for instance, but saving images takes a little longer.  The E1050TW includes several useful features like a panorama mode and modes to detect faces, smiles, and subjects with their eyes closed.


Image Quality

The 5x optical zoom gives a nice even image across the whole photo.  In wide-angle mode, barrel-shaped distortion is clearly present and it's a shame the internal software can't correct for that automatically.  The exposure system works well and, produces rather attractive photos.  Sometimes a little too attractive, actually, as they're extremely accentuated, obscuring the details in favour of misleadingly sharp contours. 


The electronic noise handling is no better.  Even at 100 ISO there is visible blurriness, and the loss of detail is really noticeable at 400 ISO, which doesn't leave much room for manoeuvre at low light levels, especially on a camera without any image stabilisation.


In our studio and under regular light bulbs, the white balance was--almost inevitably--dominated by warm tones.  Outside, colours are a little more accurate, if a little saturated, and the 720p video mode with optical zoom is equally disappointing with shots lacking detail and a lot of fuzziness in darker areas.