I’ve always quite fancied the looks of the Ricoh cameras but it was the Queen of the Compacts, Zara from Shiny Shiny, who got to take a look at the £299 Ricoh CX1 and I think she quite liked it.

Yes, it may only be blessed with a 9.2-megapixel sensor but a CMOS beats a CCD hands down in the point and press department. You also get a decent optical zoom range of a wide angle 28mm to an up close 200mm. The 4fps rapid fire will certainly come in handy and the 1cm macro is a bonus too but I’d like to see some more manual control if you’re forking out 300 smackers for the privilege. Know what I mean?