The 12-megapixel Olympus mju-7010 might sound like a minor upgrade to the mju-7000, which suffers from an ugly exterior and a run-of-the-mill 7x zoom. In fact, although the price is similar, at around £200, the mju-7010 looks and feels like a completely different camera.
Welcome facelift
It's two things that make the difference. Firstly, you still get a 7x zoom, but this time it's a wideangle one, offering the equivalent of 27-270mm. Secondly, the camera's had a redesign. It's prettier, slimmer and looks great.
The lens is pretty good, too. There's not much distortion, despite the zoom range, and the sharpness holds up even at full zoom. There's no sign of any chromatic aberration, either, although this may be down to some clever in-camera corrections, rather than the lens.
You don't just get a good zoom range but an excellent focus range too. The mju-7010's 'super macro' mode goes right down to 20mm, which lets you get amazing close-ups worthy of a digital SLR and a specialist macro lens.
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