GE E850 Review

Review Date: August 13th 2007
Author: Mark Goldstein

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Conclusion

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	3
Features	4
Ease-of-Use	3
Image Quality	2
Value for Money	3

The GE E850 is an intriguing camera on paper that sadly doesn't realise anywhere near its full potential when you actually use it. The E850 suffers from two main problems - slow performance and horrible image quality - and these two reasons alone should make you look elsewhere, despite the wealth of features on offer and the bargain price-tag. This camera has the worst noise performance that I've ever seen, with noticeable noise at the slowest speed of ISO 80 and an almost unusable ISO 200 setting. The faster settings of 400-1600 are frankly a joke, making great impressionistic paintings out of your photos. In turn, the high noise levels render the electronic image stabilisation system useless, which limits this camera to use only in excellent lighting conditions, for example outside on a bright sunny day. The E850 is also painfully slow in operation, with a 5 second startup time and 3 second lockup between taking each photo. We haven't seen performance like this for quite a few years now. On a more positive note, the 5x optical zoom lens is a welcome bonus, especially as it starts at 28mm wide, and it's even quite fast in terms of maximum apertures (at least for this class of camera). The 3 inch LCD screen is also a great feature on such an affordable and stylish camera. Ultimately, however, those headline grabbing features don't make up for the GE E850's rather serious negative aspects. If you want a nice looking camera that you can brag about to your friends and which doesn't cost the earth, then the GE E850 fits the bill, but if you want a camera that's fun to use and takes good photos, save your money and look elsewhere.

PhotographyBLOG is a member of the DIWA organisation. Our test results for the GE E850 have been submitted to DIWA for comparison with test results for different samples of the same camera model supplied by other DIWA member sites.