Pentax Optio W80 gets tough

Fwd Tech  Thursday 25 June 2009

One of the toughest cameras we've seen: it's the Pentax Optio W80

The Pentax Optio W80 is one tough customer. We’ve seen tough cameras before (the Olympus Mju Tough 6000 for instance), but this is by far the most solid offering from the bods at Pentax.

So what makes the Pentax Optio W80 tougher than a well done steak from Morrisons? Firstly it loves gadget kryptonite – water: it’s waterproof up to 16ft under the wet stuff. Secondly, you can drop it from a height of 3.3ft and it’ll survive. And finally it has a cold-proof design that allows it to be used in sub-freezing temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius. All of which makes this the Chuck Norris (when he was younger) of cameras.

So the Pentax Optio W80’s tough. But what’s it like as a camera? Firstly it has a 2.5-inch anti-reflective LCD for framing up snaps taken by the 12.1-megapixel sensor. Fast Face Detection tech sees up to 32 faces in 0.03 seconds, plus it has Smile Capture (sorry Gordon Brown) and Blink Detection. There’s even a 5x optical zoom and an HD movie mode that captures in 1280×720 pixels at full 30fps.

The Pentax Optio W80 will be out in the US next month for $299.95 (or around £180 in British money). Hopefully it’ll be winging its way to good old Blighty shortly. We’ll keep you in the loop.