Pentax I-10

After years of making modern-looking compacts with half-hearted performances, Pentax seems to be looking for inspiration in past success. The I-10's design is based on the Pentax Auto 110 mini SLR (110 becomes I-10, you see?), with the brand almost certainly hoping to rekindle nostalgia for a once iconic product ... a bit like VW's New Beetle. And with a wide-angle 5x zoom lens and a stabilised 12-Megapixel sensor, this 2010 remake looks to be pretty well-equipped.

Handling

When reworking a design that's 30 years old (the Auto 110 was presented at the Photokina trade show in 1980), you'd think the first logical thing to do would be to update the build and manufacturing quality. We were a little disappointed on that front though, as the Optio I-10 is housed in a hard, basic plastic casing, which gives a less-than-reassuring hollow sound when tapped, particularly on the bump that houses the flash. The grey plastic moulding on the top of the camera looks like it's straight out of a Playmobil car and the battery compartment door wobbles distinctly.


On the back there's a 2.7-inch 16:9 widescreen LCD. This wide format means that in photo mode (native format 4:3), a large border is left on the left-hand side of the screen so your prized snap isn't covered up with all kinds of information about the shooting conditions. However, the screen's resolution could be better and it has tight viewing angles, especially towards the bottom.

The zoom ring is positioned on the back face of the camera and is designed to be controlled with your thumb rather than your index finger. This is a great retro design feature but it's not so good for keeping hold of the camera (see insert). On the whole, this camera isn't exactly a dream to handle. It has quite a low-quality feel to it and it doesn't feel particularly sturdy.

Responsiveness

Given their very similar performances, it's pretty safe to assume that the I-10 and the H90 use the same internal electronics and software. The only difference here is a slightly slower start-up time (time for the stabilisation to warm up?). The camera is therefore reasonably responsive in all fields, but definitely isn't the speediest model we've ever seen. It's a little slow to turn itself around between taking two photos too. All in all, it's pretty average stuff.

Picture Quality

The I-10 has a 5x zoom lens equivalent to 28-140 mm. In wide angle, the I-10 takes shots that are fairly sharp in the centre but not so clear around the edges, whereas in telephoto the shots are quite poor quality across the frame. It doesn't handle sensitivity particularly well either, with heavy smoothing visible from 400 ISO.


The results are very similar to the H90, another 'retro' Pentax compact which uses the same lens. However, our I-10 was perhaps not quite as good as the H90 we tested, probably due to slight differences in manufacturing.

That said, the addition of a mechanical stabilisation system (the H90 only has electronic stabilisation) makes a real difference, and you'll notice the improvement straight away. In fact, the I-10 takes pictures at 1/10ths of a second with no problem at all.


Video

Video is recorded in 720p HD resolution but in the M-jpeg format. Sound is recorded in mono and the microphone is very sensitive to breathing noises and isn't particularly accurate. The optical zoom can't be used while filming but there's a terrible digital zoom if you really, really must.