FujiFilm Finepix A202
The A202 is a short and stubby little camera that bears a resemblance to most normal 35mm cameras. It's got an odd mixture of switches and dials; the on/off switch is on the top along with a dial for selecting picture, video and review modes that encircles the shutter button. On the back are buttons for accessing the menu, focus and zoom, as well as a relatively small preview LCD. The A202 works from 2 standard AA batteries.
The A202 is relatively unremarkable in use, but that's pretty much par for the course at this price point. Novices might find the menu system a little confusing initially, as it mostly relies on symbols for its various settings. Given that the menu itself comes up in a specially coloured bubble, it wouldn't have taken much work to include text tags as well.
The A202's test shots were decent but a little dark compared to the average. The camera handles motion about as well as any other in our roundup, but we did find that close shots tended towards the blurry more often with the A202. On a camera with no adjustable focus, of course, there's no way to manually fix that.
The A202 only offers a 2.5x digital zoom capability. As we've noted before, digital zoom is next to useless unless you just want digital binoculars; you'll nearly always get better shots by not zooming in and just blowing up the shot in a decent photo editing package. There's no external dock possibility, although you can buy a battery recharger. Uploading of images is managed via a very standard USB cable.
The A202 is a decent camera in a highly competitive field. At an RRP of AU$375, though, cheaper alternatives are available with just as much grunt and better picture-taking capability.
FujiFilm A202
Company: Hanimex
Price: AU$399
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: 1800 226 355
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I have just seen an advertisement for the CX4230 in a pop up when I went to the Korean Herald newspaper at http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/index.asp . It was selling there for 185000 Won which equals AU$204, half what we would pay for it. I wonder why we can't get it at that price here?