Genius - G-Shot DV 610 review

So, you want a digital camera and an MP3 player, but you'd rather not carry two bits of kit around with you. There are several options that offer 'all in one' solutions to this dilemma. One route is to carry a phone with a camera and music player, while another is to look at devices like the G-Shot DV 610 which offer these things and a range of other extras on top.

The G-Shot DV 610, in fact, claims to offer six features; digital stills and video camera (that's two), MP3 player, Web-cam, digital voice recorder and the ability to be used as a mass storage device. All in a package measuring 100 x 70 x 30mm.

Aside from the device itself, you get a range of extras; a belt-clip-style carrying case, a lanyard for wearing the thing around your neck, a tripod for when using the G-Shot DV 610 as a Web-cam, a stereo headset, a USB cable for PC connections and AV cables for sending movies to a TV.

You also get two printed manuals and a CD with device drivers and various bits of image manipulation software for PCs (Mac users just get the drivers). The box contents are topped off by a mains power cable for charging the Lithium-Ion battery that powers the G-Shot DV 610.

There is 16MB of built-in memory but only 4MB of this is available for storage. There's also an SD card slot that supports cards up to 512MB in size. If you have a card in the slot, everything you save is automatically sent there, which is handy as it saves you having to make settings changes.

Moving between the various features is achieved using a combination of buttons and a navigation wheel on two edges of the G-Shot DV 610, with the flip-out, 2-inch LCD screen that you use for framing video and stills being used to show options. The screen swivels nicely to give a wide range of viewing angles and ways of holding the hardware.

Using the device for mass storage worked well enough, as did the Web-cam feature, though the driver provided is only for PCs and you'll need your own video-calling software. The voice recording also worked without a hitch.

Where digital video and stills were concerned, taking shots and videos was easy enough and there are switches and buttons on the camera for macro, landscape and portrait stills and for using the up-to-8x digital zoom.

There's a flash and self-timer, a small range of white balance settings, some effects (normal, black and white, sepia), and a few other settings to fiddle with. There's also a funny 'two in one' shooting mode that lets you take two snaps for opposite halves of a single image. It's rather fun.

Images can be shot at resolutions of 2976 x 2232, 2048 x 1536 and 1024 x 768 pixels, the higher resolution achieved by software interpolation. Video is captured at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 pixels, both at 30 frames per second. Image quality was surprisingly good, certainly fine for sharing images by e-mail or using on a Web site.

Finally, we copied some MP3s from a hard drive onto an SD card and played them back. Quality through the supplied headphones was reasonable but not wonderful, while the volume level was quite good. The headphone connector is 2.5mm which means that to use a higher quality set you'll need a converter.

Genius - G-Shot D1211 review

Genius is a Taiwanese company that's starting to build a reputation for designing small, affordable, multifunction digital cameras (still and video) and its latest 5-megapixel G-Shot continues the tradition.

From the second you take it out of the box you realise just how feather-light it is (a mere 88g without batteries) and it's roughly the size of a credit card (88.5 x 59 x 28.5mm). Powered by two AAA batteries, you power it on by sliding back the stylish black lens cover and you're ready to point and click.

There's a storage capacity of 32MB internal memory and 2GB external (we used a 2GB SD for the review but it also supports MMC) which will allow you to capture a maximum of 3,094 images (at 5MP) or record up to 129 minutes of video. Everything is viewed through the 2.4-inch TFT LCD display on the back and there's a playback facility for both slide shows and video (there's a built-in microphone, but no speaker).

The control system is simplicity itself. Turn on, hit the Menu Mode button, use the two zoom buttons to scroll up and down through your choices and hit the large Set button to confirm. As this is a multifunction machine, you have five options: Digital Still Camera, Digital Video Camera, Web Cam, Game and Mass Storage Device.

The still camera has a fixed F3.0/8.0 lens with a Macro range of 17-19cm and with resolutions from 1,280 x 960 to an interpolated 4,048 x 3,040, plus a 4x digital zoom. High quality images up to the maximum resolution remain sharp even in 12-inch x 18 -inch prints. The video camera aspect produces AVI format movies at either 320 x 240 (30fps max) or 640 x 480 (23 fps max). Both stills and videos can be transferred to PC via the supplied USB 2.0 cable and then edited or catalogued using the included Presto VideoWorks and Presto Mr Photo software.

The same USB 2.0 lead will help turn your G-Shot into a Web Cam at a passable 320 x 240 (15fps max) or 640 x 480 (14fps max). However, if you just want to kill some time you can play one of the four supplied games (Boxboy, Tetris, Memory and Gobang), though beware of the fact that the batteries are quick to deplete.

Essentially this is a fun, quick-snap camera that you can slip in your handbag or pocket and bring out almost on impulse to catch that special moment.

Genius - G-Shot DV5133 review

The Genius G-Shot series has always aimed squarely at the lower end of the market, for those people who want to have as many multimedia functions as possible crammed into one compact, easy to carry machine. To that end the DV5133 doesn't disappoint, as it aims to be a still and video camera, Web-cam, music player and even eBook reader and still look relatively stylish.

The first thing you notice when you take it out of the box is how light it is (scarcely 200g) and how small; around the size of a chunky bar of soap. Styled in chic silver, it's designed for maximum ease of use with most of the controls and inputs down one edge and autofocus for both video and still photo capture.

Power is supplied via two AA alkaline batteries (supplied) which fit snugly in the side panel and the flip side has the 2.4-inch LTPS LCD monitor which pops up to turn the camera on and then rotates up to 270 degrees. There's a built-in 64MB memory which can be supplemented up to 2GB via the SD/MMC Card Slot in the base.

The circular control pad is a standard design and the menus are familiar to navigate around. In video mode you're shooting in MPEG-4 with 640 x 480 (VGA) and 320 x 240 (QVGA) video clips at DVD quality 30fps. The DV5133 boasts a true 5.2-megapixel CMOS image sensor with interpolation up to 11-megapixels, so your still images are clear and sharp.

Still image resolutions range from 3,840 x 2,880 at high (i.e. 11 megapixels), to 2,592 x 1,944 at standard (5 megapixels) and 1,600 x 1,200 at low (2 megapixels), all recorded in JPEG format. The 8x digital zoom is unfortunately very jerky in operation so isn't advised for video usage but you do have three focus range settings for macro, portrait and normal modes. Two snapshots can be combined into one or you can take five continuous pictures in multi-snap mode.

Apart from its photo recording functions, you can also use this camera as a Web-cam (complete with security motion detection), to play back MP3 tracks with lyrics attached, as a speech recorder or to read eBooks. The supplied USB cable allows data to flow back and forth to your PC and the TV-out option means you can watch your videos and stills on the big screen.

Finally, the supplied software includes Arcsoft Media Converter (to convert any kind of video file format into MPEG-4 Xvid compatible), Arcsoft Showbiz DVD for burning copies of your movies and Arcsoft Photo Impression to help edit and organise your still photos.