Olympus FE-240 review

Though its performance was disappointing, the FE-240's images were actually reasonably nice. Colours were accurate and neutral -- even indoors, a tricky thing to accomplish with a camera's automatic white balance. Fine details came through clearly, and we saw very little lens distortion.

Because of its fully automated operation, we couldn't perform our full regimen of noise tests, but given adequate lighting, photos had very little grain or fuzz. Just be careful when shooting in low light -- the camera automatically ramps up the ISO sensitivity, generating lots of noise.

Conclusion
Despite the Olympus FE-240's sluggish performance and almost complete lack of manual settings, it's still a pretty good camera for new users. If you simply want to take decent photos and don't want to fiddle around with a lot of menus and buttons, it's an acceptable choice.

Its price may seem slightly high for such a simple camera, but its photos look good, it's easy to use and it's small enough to take almost anywhere.

Shooting time
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon Digital IXUS 60

1.5 

1.5 

0.5 

Kodak EasyShare V705

1.2 

3.6 

0.3 

Olympus mju 760

2.1 

2.1 

0.5 

Olympus FE-240

5.1 

2.6 

0.8 

Olympus FE-200

7.3 

4 

1 

Additional editing by Kate Macefield