Digital photography is gaining in popularity, and the features offered by the HP PhotoSmart 2710 are designed to cater to this: PictBridge, a large colour screen and on-printer photo editing. The HP is the most expensive machine here, but isn't geared to one particular market or another.

Along with the Sony Cyber-shot P-93, the Canon Powershot A95 is the big lad of this roundup with a pretty decent 5-megapixel CCD. The rest vary from 3-4-megapixel. While this does give the Canon a bit of an edge over the competition in terms of resolution and functionality, it's the camera's other attributes that cemented this unit in the top three.