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Olympus FE-240 (silver)
Reviewed by
Will Greenwald
on 03/05/2007
camera on buttons back bag

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  • Quick specs
  • Digital camera type: Ultracompact
  • Resolution: 7.1 megapixels
  • Optical zoom: 5 x
  • See full specifications

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The good: Decent pictures; small and light.

The bad: Very slow performance; no manual settings.

The bottom line: The Olympus FE-240 is slow and doesn't have any manual settings, but at least it takes good pictures.

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CNET editors' review

  • Reviewed by:
    Will Greenwald
  • Reviewed on: 03/05/2007
Sometimes you just don't want to agonize over whether you should choose the soup or the salad; the Coke or the Pepsi; the PC or the Mac. Olympus realizes just how hard some choices can be, which is why it's made the FE series of digital cameras. They're simple and direct, and they require almost no choices besides when to press the shutter. The Olympus FE-240 is one such camera.

The attractive, compact FE-240 measures 0.8 inch thick and weighs less than five ounces. Its small metal body fits comfortably in most pockets. Despite its small size, the camera's various controls are easy to manipulate, with buttons large enough for big thumbs to use.

The FE-240's most notable feature is its lens. The camera's 38mm-to-190mm-equivalent lens offers a 5x magnification factor over the other FE-cameras' 3x lenses. Besides the increased zoom, the FE-240 sports fairly mundane features, such as a 7-megapixel sensor and a 2.5-inch LCD screen.

Like all Olympus FE-series cameras, the FE-240 is almost completely devoid of manual settings. Besides flash and macro shooting, preset scene modes, and exposure compensation, users can't make any image adjustments. White balance, ISO sensitivity, and other factors are completely automated by the camera, giving a very literal sense to the phrase "point-and-shoot." This isn't necessarily a bad thing; automation can be beneficial as long as the images look good in the end.

The FE-240's performance ranged from mediocre to terrible. After a 2.6-second start-up time, we could only fire off a shot every 5.1 seconds; that painful wait increased to 5.7 seconds with the onboard flash enabled. While 5 seconds is indeed far too long to wait between shots, it's not too surprising; the previous-generation FE-200 had shot-to-shot times of more than 7 seconds. The shutter wasn't nearly as responsive as it should have been, lagging 0.8 second on our high-contrast target and 1.9 seconds in low-contrast conditions. Like almost all Olympus FE-series cameras, the FE-240 doesn't have any burst mode.

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Reviews from around the WebPowered by alaTest

  • alaTest.com

    Editors' rating: 85

    Summary: alaTest has collected and analyzed 149 reviews of Olympus FE-240 from international magazines and websites. Experts rate this product 65/100 and users 68/100. Comparing these reviews to 555170 other Digital Compact Cameras reviews gives this product an overall alaScore™ 85/100 = Very Good.

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  • whatdigitalcamera.com

    Editors' rating: 83

    Summary: Let down by second-rate image quality

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  • digitalcamerareview.com

    Summary: If you have your eye on a new Olympus FE model and have a bit more to spend than you would on the FE-230, I would point you towards the FE-240, with its 5x optical zoom.  They're essentially identical cameras, except for the lens.  While camera speed ...

    Read full review

  • cameras.co.uk

    Editors' rating: 69

    Summary: The Olympus FE-240 is a seven megapixel, pocket sized digital camera. The feature that makes it different to many other digital cameras of this type is the fact it has a longer than standard 5x optical zoom lens.

    Read full review

Olympus FE-240 (silver)

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