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.

HITACHI DZ-MV208E

There are always moments in life when you wish you had your camera to hand. The Labs team rounds up the latest pocket cameras.

The compact EasyShare DX6490 is one of Kodak's latest in their DX high performance, consumer range of cameras. Featuring a 4.23MP CCD (with 4MP effective), the camera is capable of capturing images at up to 2,304 x 1,728 resolution, which places it at the higher end of the consumer digital camera spectrum.

Take a portable media player, add video and sound recording functionality plus a 3.1MP digital still camera and you've got the Richo Vivitar DVR390H.

Featuring a compact lozenge-shaped body with a fair bit of weight to it, the Cyber-shot P-93 is a solid camera that implies strength and good engineering. Internally, the camera has a 5.1-megapixel CCD and is capable of taking some excellent photos.

The slimline HP Photosmart R607 follows on from the R707 in that it shares many of that camera's fine features and styling, including its plastic/magnesium-alloy casing.

Hewlett Packard's new digital camera takes many steps in the right direction to introduce professional-level features for the consumer photographer, yet suffers from a few, minor flaws that detract from its overall polished design.

The BenQ DC2300 is a 2.1-megapixel camera with 2,048 x 1,536 optical resolution, 8MB internal memory, fixed focus, and built-in flash. It stores images and video in MMC and SD card media, has a USB interface and takes AA batteries. A fairly low priced camera, the DC2300 offers white-balance modes, metering modes and exposure adjustments.

This 4-megapixel camera is a good point-and-shooter with a generous 2.2in preview LCD on the back and good one-handed operation. Its auto shooting modes work well, and the menus are extremely user-friendly with large icons and simple choices.

A sexy magnesium-alloy housing gives the IXUS 400 one of the most compact camera bodies submitted this month. The bright 118,000-pixel LCD gives an excellent preview of your images or for shot placement when not using the viewfinder.

The Camedia C-5050 is a 5.3-megapixel camera offering a good balance of automatic and manual settings, catering for users who like a professional look and feel. It also offers USB connectivity, separate status LCD, optical resolution of 2,560 x 1,920, support for RAW output format and video-out.

BenQs small 1.3-megapixel camera is a stylish pearl coloured affair, and is one of the tiniest cameras that PC Authority has reviewed so far (aside, coincidentally, from the BenQ 300mini we reviewed in May 2002, page 81).

For a camera as packed with controls as this, Minolta has still kept the body comfortable and light. With more features than your average Boeing, this camera's menu modes are entered into with a jog dial that locks in the off position, stopping you from draining your batteries with accidental inside travel-gear shots.

The DiMAGE F300 is a 5.3-megapixel camera, with a built-in 3x optical zoom, 32MB of internal memory, and support for SD and MMC media. It's a camera that allows a good deal of control of exposure, colour, contrast, saturation, and white balance and also features a noise reduction system.

The Caplio G3 is a 3.24-megapixel compact digital camera featuring a maximum optical resolution of 2,048 x 1,536, 3x zoom and auto and manual focus. It records images to 8MB of internal memory, SD or MMC media. It is capable of audio and video capture, video-out, and it can connect to a computer via USB.

The SiPix StyleCam Blink is an amazingly small digital camera, quite possibly the smallest we've reviewed at PC Authority. It's thinner than the BenQ DC1300 and Sony DSC-U10 (October 2002, page 53), but has a square form factor.

Receiving this model last month, we knew we were seeing innovation in action with the introduction of OLED technology and the ultra wide and bright 2.2-inch display. OLED allows for less power consumption while providing a noticeably brighter and clearer display than other technologies – perfect for direct sunlight and angular viewing.

The Creative PC-CAM 850 is a 2-megapixel digital camera geared to double up as a Webcam and a camcorder. Priced at a low $279, it hosts an impressive 16MB of built-in memory, writes to both MMC and SD card media and also has S-Video output.