Pentax Optio W90

UPDATE 19 October 2010: the overall score of the Pentax W90 has been brought down to two stars. In line with our newly tightened test criteria, the lack of stabilisation cost the W90 a star.

Whereas most manufacturers release new waterproof models on a yearly basis, Pentax has decided to update last summer's W80 just six months later. On paper, the differences don't look huge, and the lens and sensor look exactly the same. However, a new 'electronic stabilisation' function has now appeared and the image processor has changed too. Will that be enough to make the Pentax W90 this summer's must-have?

Handling

First contact with the W90 holds no real surprises. The camera is well made, which I suppose it has to be if it's waterproof to 6 metres! It's made entirely from plastic, but good-quality plastic, and has a rubber casing around the sides for added shock protection. Grip is good, but you'll have to be careful not to put your finger over the lens, as it's positioned more centrally than on most other brands' compacts.


The design is plain and simple, making the W90 very easy to use. The wide screen is a surprising feature, but as a result, the icons leave the screen clear for framing shots in photo mode and it also allows full-screen video recording. In passing, it would have been nice to see a separate button for video recording too, but you'll have to make do without on the W90. Anyway, back to the screen. What's more annoying is that it's a TN panel, meaning the screen looks dark if you look at it from below. For a camera that's obviously been designed with outdoor types in mind (see insert), that could be particularly problematic, as when you're half way up a rock face you can't always be directly in front of the screen each time you want to take a photo. Plus, the display is prone to reflections and glare, and you'll have trouble lining up shots in bright sunlight.

It's a shame too, as apart from that the camera's interface is clear and pleasant to use.

Responsiveness

This was the major let-down of the W80 so it's good to see improvements have been made. The start-up time has been halved, together with the time it takes to shoot and save a photo! This makes the W90 pretty quick off the mark, although the photo-to-photo turnaround time remains a little too long, but bearable at 3.7 seconds. It's not a patch on the Sony TX5, but the Pentax W90 beats the Olympus high-end model hands down. In fact, it seems a shame that Pentax didn't take this improvement one step further to outdo all the competition, but as it stands, the W90 still puts many other cameras to shame.

The autofocus is nothing special but it does the job just fine. The burst mode is fairly standard at around one frame per second.

Picture quality

In wide-angle mode and at low sensitivities, a 20 x 27 cm print comes out perfectly fine, even if the picture does lack precision around the edges. In telephoto mode, things are a little more problematic, as even with prints of this size or when viewing the picture on the screen, the lack of sharpness in the picture is obvious. The edges, in particular, are quite simply blurred, whereas the centre of the image is slightly hazy.


High sensitivity has always been a problem for Pentax compacts, and the W90 is no exception. Smoothing at 400 ISO is moderate, although there's a 'tapestry' effect that's particularly noticeable in areas of fine detail such as foliage. At 800 ISO noise is more of a problem, even on a screen.

What makes things worse is that the Pixel Track SR 'electronic stabilisation' appears to be completely useless. We only started to see sharp shots of Barbie at 1/20 seconds, whereas mechanical or optical stabilisation systems show pretty much no defects from 1/10 seconds, and the best can even stabilise pictures at 1/4 seconds. As a result, the W90 must often increase ISO sensitivity, and on a day-to-day basis, it's not uncommon for it to choose the terrible 800 ISO setting.


Video

The W90 films in 720p HD. Is that enough to film good-quality videos? No, unfortunately the video quality is no better than the photo quality. The definition is fine, but that's about the only good feature. There's lots of digital noise, the dynamic range is limited with over-exposed light zones and, even worse, coloured fringes appear around highly contrasted areas.

The microphone is located on the top of the camera and it isn't too sensitive to breathing noises. It does, however, record in mono and it doesn't capture sound that accurately. You can't use the optical zoom in video mode but you can use a pretty awful digital zoom instead.