Pentax Optio W60 Digital Camera Review

by Steve Morgenstern
Published on September 16, 2008

Navigation
Intro	Physical Tour
Color and Resolution	Noise and Video
Speed and Timing	Components
Design / Layout	Modes
Control Options	Image Parameters
Connectivity / Extras	Overall Impressions
Conclusion	Sample Photos
Specs / Ratings

Speed/Timing
All speed tests were performed with a SanDisk Extreme III 8-gigabyte SDHC memory card, so bottlenecks caused by writing to a slow memory card are not a factor.

 

Startup to First Shot (6.30)
The W60 was slow to wake up from its slumbers here, consistently taking over three seconds from power-on to shot taken.

Shot-to-Shot (0.96)
In the faster of the two continuous release modes, Pentax claims you’ll get 3.5 frames per second. We got 3.46, which sounds great -- until you realize that the high-speed mode limits image resolution to 5 megapixels on this 10-megapixel camera. The slower continuous shooting mode, which saves shots directly to the memory card instead of internal buffer memory, ran just a hair under 1 frame per second, a fairly pokey performance.

Shutter-Shot (3.48)
Shutter lag, that annoying gap between the time you press the shutter and the moment a photo is captured, is still an issue for the W60. Unlike higher-performing cameras, where this test often produces results too small to measure accurately, the W60 consistently took over half a second to snap a picture, an unimpressive result.

Processing (3.17)

Here we measure the time it takes from pressing the shutter to seeing your photo displayed on the LCD screen. Again, the W60 disappointed, taking over two and a half seconds on average before you saw your photo and were ready to take another.