Pentax W20 Review

The Pentax Optio W20 is an update of the existing Optio W10 model, and continues the company's lineup of W-series models that will go almost anywhere their owners will, without fear of harm from dust and water. As with that model, the Pentax W20 is rated as "JIS Class 8" waterproof - meaning it can actually be used to shoot photos up to five feet underwater for durations up to thirty minutes, without the need for a separate underwater housing. It also carries over the "JIS Class 5" dustproof rating, the second highest rating on that scale. Changes from the older W10 to the new Optio W20 include a higher resolution seven megapixel CCD imager, higher maximum sensitivity of ISO 1600 in Blur Reduction mode, increased flash range at ISO auto, and just over twice as much (21.9MB) built-in memory. As well as the Blur Reduction mode, there's also a new Auto Picture mode which chooses the relevant scene mode automatically. Candle and Sunset modes have been removed to accomodate these additions.

The Pentax W20 is also listed as 5 grams lighter when fully loaded and ready to shoot, and adds support for the new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) standard, which extends the maximum flash card capacity to a theoretical 32GB (4GB cards being the largest at the time of this writing), with sustained transfer rates of up to six megabytes per second. Other features of the Optio W20 include a 3x optical zoom lens, 2.5" LCD (but no optical viewfinder - something which is sadly becoming rather rare on a lot of digicams these days), and a 30 frames per second movie mode that includes audio and has no limits on clip length (other than available memory and battery life, of course). Images are stored on Secure Digital (SDHC/SD) memory cards, and connectivity includes both USB (type unspecified) and NTSC / PAL video, and power comes from a D-LI8 Lithium Ion rechargeable battery.