Olympus really set the scene for the ultra zoom market compact market with the C-760 and C-770 series. Since then Panasonic has dominated the segment and all the manufacturers have got into the game.

The Olympus is a light camera, so nice to travel with, but does not feel solid as the other cameras in the test. The mju 9010 has a 230K 2.7 inch LCD. The screen is actually pretty good outdoors where most fail. It’s not the highest quality, that goes to the Ricoh and the Nikon models.

The mju 9010 features a 14MP sensor, 10x zoom lens with a 28mm equiv wide angle, 720P HD video.

And this is where the problem with the Olympus starts. That 14MP sensor. The image is rather wishy washy. It’s just not as good as the Ricoh CX3. It’s hard to know if the lens is good or not, as the printed results at 8 x 10 inches, was the lowest quality of all the cameras.

The auto white balance does a pretty good job as does the auto focus. Star-up o the camera was very quick.  A problem we found with performance though was that it was slow between shots and slow to write to the camera.

The menus have improved and they look more ‘Casio’ like. Casio had some of the best menus in the market. Previous Olympus cameras had the worst menu and user interface on the market. They are definitely not up the Panasonics and the Ricohs in this test though.

There is a problem with the interface though, and that is the buttons. They are difficult to press and the etched symbols are impossible to read.

The mju 9010 does not like high contrast situations. When taken outdoors, the camera would quickly clip the highlights. In other words, detail in the bight areas disappeared. The camera does a LOT of processing to make the images half decent due to the ultra small, high megapixel sensors deficiencies.

The Good

• Light camera, decent build, but we have reservations
• quick start-up
• good auto focus
• white balance (generally)
• good LCD
• dedicated movie button.

The Bad

• Image quality was low
• video mode not brilliant
• slow image write times
• seriously poor low light performance
• does not feel solid

Previous – Fuji F70 Next – Ricoh CX3

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