Face detection, smile detection and now blink detection -- Pentax ups the facial recognition stakes with an auto-everything snapper that claims to deliver the perfect portrait. It's an 8-megapixel compact with a large screen and zoom, and is available now for around £160.

Strengths
The amount of sheer camera you get for just over £150 these days is impressive. Build quality is good all round -- the metal shell is light but solid, and the 76mm (3-inch) screen is crisp and colourful in full daylight, although it fades somewhat in the dark.

Pentax has packed the V20 with a generous 5x lens that's both fast and responsive when zooming and about as sharp as could you reasonably hope. There are few signs of distortion or purple fringing. Focusing options are simply excellent, including a choice of target areas, tracking focus for moving subjects, useful presets and manual focusing.

For its features, the movie mode -- VGA up to 30 frames per second -- delivers rich, smooth colours and soft, flattering skin tones. The 'Smile Capture' is very effective, capturing grins and smirks at least as well as Sony's Smile Shutter. Colours and exposure are well-judged, making for decent portraits and the built-in flash has enough reach for most indoor shots. Noise is low, up to around ISO 800 at least. Post-shooting features are good too, with red-eye elimination and lots of editing options including movie trimming.