Casio Exilim EX-S12

Distinguishing a compact digital camera from the crowd is next to impossible: it's not just that they all look similar, but the major concerns of consumers – megapixel counts, features and the cost of storage – have all been largely resolved. Luckily the Exilim EX-S12 has the headline written for it: Casio claims it's the slimmest compact camera in the world.

Indeed, the Exilim is smaller than just about anything we could lay our hands on in the office. It’s almost exactly as tall as a credit card and only about half a centimetre wider. And there’s the depth: just 15mm deep means even the skinniest of jeans will comfortably accommodate the Exilim.

3x the fun

The lens, which smoothly extends when you push the top-mounted power button, is the equivalent to a 36-108mm lens, which translates to 3x optical zoom. It’s not huge, but 36mm is respectably wide. The tradeoff is noticeable distortion: straight lines bend noticeably when the lens is zoomed all the way out.

The EX-S12’s 12.1 megapixel sensor produced good images during our testing: high-contrast images were handled well, although we did notice rather mottled textures in many of our images, particularly at higher ISO settings. The EX-S12 goes up as high as ISO 3200, but this won’t be a setting you use much.

Mash the keypad with your palm... now

The drawback to the Exilim’s desirably-small dimensions is usability. Trying to hit left on the direction-pad is tricky for anyone with normally-sized fingers: the right hand side of the screen has a protruding lip that makes life difficult. There’s also the impractical size of the buttons. Remember Smints? They’re significantly smaller than those, and are almost perfectly-flush with the back of the camera, further hampering your efforts to use the menus.

Luckily, once you adapt to pressing very precisely, the Exilim offers a respectable number of features.. You can, for instance, set white balance manually, or pick your own ISO, from ISO 64 to 3200. The knowledgeable will also appreciate the live histogram. There are various continuous shooting modes, including a lightning fast 10fps mode that captures up to 20 frames in two seconds. You’ll need to able to stand the five second delay for processing, and another 10 seconds for saving your snaps to an SD card. There’s also a quality sacrifice: in 10fps mode quality is forced down to 1,280 x 960.

Video killed...

The inevitable video mode shoots at a maximum of 720p, but our test videos were rather disappointing. We noticed a lot of noise in our shots as well as no small amount of motion blurring. It’s a handy added bonus, but not a particularly memorable one.

Labels like "world's thinnest" crop up every few weeks, and unless you're a desperately shallow fashionista you should investigate the EX-S12 beyond its admittedly gorgeous shell, particularly since it costs nearly £180. Its image quality isn't ground-breaking and it can be highly irritating to use. Worse, the excellent Canon Ixus 80 IS now costs under £150. Sure, you get fewer megapixels, but what price usability and quality?