All six of these digital cameras have a feature that caught our attention. The most obvious is the unusual Kyocera, which is incredibly slender in its closed form, yet has all the features you expect from a modern digital camera. Unfortunately it only has a rating of 3-megapixels and its picture quality is rather poor, so we suggest you shy away from this rather stylish camera.

Olympus makes a feature of the weather-resistant nature of its Mju410, and we have no doubt that the claims are correct. It's a superbly constructed camera that feels good to use and has a natty remote control to help you take self-portraits, but once again we felt that the picture quality just wasn't good enough. And the name is just daft.

Then there's the Panasonic DMC-FX5 which looks rather dull, and initially failed to impress us. Once we had got used to its ways we found that the Panasonic can take very impressive photos, and in this group it was the best 4-megapixel camera, however you need to be careful how you use it to get the best results.

Casio produced the most desirable camera with its Exilim EX-Z4, however it was let down by the tiny 10MB of internal memory. Although you can plug in an SD card we feel that Casio really ought to include a card with a camera at this price. That's a small point, but we were also concerned that you need to use the Casio dock to charge the battery in the EX-Z4, as well as to transfer photos. This is all well and good when you are at home but is likely to prove a major stumbling block when you're out and about or on holiday.

The best compact camera in this group is the Canon IXUS 430, which is a highly evolved version of the original IXUS. Despite its relatively old design and its reliance on clunky Compact Flash memory, this is a lovely camera to use. It supports PictBridge and the output from this 4-megapixel camera will satisfy most users.

The best camera in this group is also the biggest and heaviest, and it uses disposable AA batteries rather than a rechargeable Li-Ion cell. The HP Photosmart 945 has a 5-megapixel resolution and an enormous 8x digital zoom, and it produces stunning photos in almost any circumstances. You may well have no interest in lugging a camera of this size around, but you should certainly consider it long and hard, as it's a gem.