Olympus X-880: Pick a card

The Olympus X-880, available exclusively at Jessops, is a decently-specced compact with a neat card trick up its sleeve

Richard Trenholm

Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.

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Richard Trenholm

Jan. 20, 2009 4:11 a.m. PT

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We don't expect much from compact cameras: there's hundreds of them out there, all small and portable, with the same specs and the same problems. As a result, we're always pleased to come across a pocket-friendly model that stands out from the crowd. The Olympus X-880, exclusive to Jessops, does exactly that.

The X-880 sports straightforward styling in its compact form, but a closer look reveals some neat details, like a hatch for USB, instead of a flappy rubber cover. The menu and screen brightness have a cool scalloped effect, although the back has a slightly cluttered feel, with several different styles of button on one model.

The specs aren't bad at all: it may be only an 8-megapixel affair, but you do get a 5x zoom, optical image stabilisation, 16-person face detection and movie recording.

Admittedly, the X-880 records to the decreasingly popular xD memory card format, rather than SD. But what's really caught our attention is the option to record to microSD, via a bundled adaptor. We've long been in awe of the magic of microSD, and we're pretty sold on the idea of using the same card in your phone as in your camera. It's not as easy as SD, but it's still better than xD and, hey, look at the blinkin' size of it!

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The 5x zoom has an equivalent focal length of 36-180mm -- not bad at all for a camera of this size.

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The screen may not look huge next to all those controls, but it's actually a healthy 69mm (2.7 inches).

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Olympus has included a microSD adaptor in the box, so you can use the same memory card as in your phone.

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If you're not sold on microSD, we've put it in context. That's a whopping 8GB of storage -- more than 3,000 photos -- on a chip so small that even the tiny hand of a Lego stormtrooper needs an adaptor to hold it. We're sold.