A review of the Olympus Mju 725 SW digital camera
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Olympus seem to churn out award winners like Chelsea do with their foreign players, and the Olympus Mju 725 SW is a ‘worthy successor to the EISA award winning 720 SW’ but even has an award itself under its belt, the Which Digital Camera? Best Buy. Surely, it’s competitors are wondering how they do it with such similar cameras, but Olympus must be grinning away like the big old Cheshire cat. Design |
| Available in three stunning colours, Titanium Grey, Deep Blue and Cherry Red the Olympus Mju 725 SW is constructed with a strong and durable metallic body that looks very trendy indeed. The camera is palm sized and nicely rounded around the edges which makes it very comfortable to hold, with dimensions of 91mm (w) x 58.7mm (h) x 19.8mm (d) and a weight of 149g (without battery) it will fit snugly in your jacket pocket or clutch bag on a girls night out. On the front there is a small lens in the top right hand corner and apart from the small flash that’s it. We reviewed the Cherry Red colour model and the colour is on the majority of the front of the camera apart from a small section around the edge that is silver. On the top is the power button and shutter release and on the bottom is the battery compartment which also holds the memory card. On the right hand side there is the USB/AV port and on the left side, there is, well, nothing. On the rear, the 2.5” LCD screen hogs most of the space with the zoom rocker next to it at the top. Below this is a playback button and camera mode button with quite a large speaker that could have really been situated on the side where there was plenty of room and nothing there. It’s in the place where your right thumb will hold the camera so it covers it most of the time. Below this is the d-panel and shortcut menu, delete and quick print buttons. There is an annoying piece of metal that sticks out of the right side which we believe is for the strap, but rather unnecessary, we thought. The best thing about the design of this camera is that it is very durable and is ideal for use for the outdoors as it is waterproof and shockproof. Looking at it and holding it you would never know that the Olympus Mju 725 SW is a waterproof camera and they have done such a superb job at concealing it. |
| Features |
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The Olympus Mju 725 SW has an impressive 7.1 mega pixels and a 3x optical zoom to provide excellent clarity and sharpness to your prints. There is a very clever feature on this Olympus called BrightCapture Technology which makes sure that you achieve optimum shots even in poor lighting conditions and along with the generous 2.5” LCD you can view them in complete brightness before you choose print. There is a massive 25 scene modes so you are really spoilt for choice when choosing the assistance for those troublesome shots. The Olympus Mju 725 SW is waterproof up to a water pressure equivalent to 5m depth and is also shock -proof from heights of up to 1.5m. There is an internal memory of up to 19mb and we think that it delivers some great results no matter what life throws at it, as it is can be taken literally anywhere with you with no worries about how it will cope or even if it will survive the elements. There is a great redeye reduction function that is really good and we took lots of face shots and it significantly reduced the red eye with natural results. |
| Performance |
| The Mju 725 SW was quite a nifty, speedy gonzales with its shutter lag time of about 0.8 seconds. It took only took about 3 seconds to start up the camera and take a shot and less than 3 seconds between shots, with flash adding another second. The menu was really easy to find your way around and there were some good shortcuts to save time. Once you have entered the menu everything is laid out on one screen so you can arrow up or down to find what you need to do and it then takes you into the next menu screen, one thing that we did notice though is that once you have got the menu up on the screen, it is hard to see the image behind which isn’t too great when you are trying to do in-camera editing. We chucked this camera about quite a bit and submerged it in water. There were no leaks or cracks and it seemed to cope quite well with the rough handling. Take this camera with you wherever you go and we will guarantee it will handle anything that life throws at it and take the most severe elements in its stride. |
| What's In The Box? |
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Camera, Neoprene Case, Hand strap, Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery, Battery charger, USB cable, AV cable, Software CD-ROM, Instruction manuals, Warranty card. |
| Overall Opinion |
| For the current price you are getting quite a bargain with the Olympus Mju 725 SW, especially if you are into your extreme sports or activity holidays as this little baby will cope with any weather. It is fairly easy to use and images captured were of a high standard. |
| By Hayley Malyon |
| Pros | Cons |
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| Good, Durable and Ultra-compact Waterproof & Shockproof 7.1 mega pixels |
| Factor | Rating |
|---|---|
| Ease of Use | 3/5 |
| Durability | 3/5 |
| Style | 3/5 |
| Service & Support | 3/5 |
| Value for Money | 3/5 |
| Recommend | 1/5 |
| Overall | 4/5 |