Pentax T10 Review

The Pentax Optio T10 crams a larger than average 2.5" LCD display with a relatively high resolution of 230,000 pixels into an ultracompact body that's just 20mm thick. To achieve this, Pentax needed to use most of the camera's rear panel to fit in the LCD - meaning there was little room left over for any thing else. The solution? Make the T10's LCD a touch-screen type, and put the controls on the LCD as user-friendly icons. This makes for a really clean, smooth body with a grand total of four physical buttons (power, shutter, playback, and menu) plus a zoom dial.

The Pentax T10 couples this unusual touch-screen LCD with both a 1/2.5" six megapixel CCD imager, and an smc Pentax-branded 3x optical zoom lens that provides a fairly standard 35mm-equivalent focal range of 38 - 113mm. Other features include 12MB of built-in storage memory, NTSC / PAL video and USB 2.0 Full-Speed data connectivity (rather slower than the USB 2.0 High-Speed connections offered on many cameras these days), as well as a built-in flash and a macro mode that allows focusing as close as 15 centimeters. Power comed courtesy of a proprietary Lithium Ion rechargeable battery. The Pentax Optio T10 goes on sale from March 2006,with a list price of $350.