Pentax Optio WG-1

The Optio WG-1 certainly looks the part; the body is rubberised around the rim with an aluminium-alloy front and the design itself looks rugged with chunky detailing and exposed bolts. The rubber finish helps to give the WG-1 a solid feel and ease of grip but if you do drop it, it’ll withstand an impact from up to 1.5m. The WG-1 also offers waterproofing down to an impressive 10m and will function unimpaired in cold conditions down to -100C.
The nicely spaced buttons make menu navigation very easy in the cold and under water, while its 2.7in LCD monitor gave a crisp, clear view during our underwater tests. Elsewhere results were mixed; it survived submersion with no ill effects but with the flash turned off and only digital image stabilisation instead of a lens or sensor-shift system, picture quality started to struggle and we found lots of Noise appearing in the images. Those issues aside, the WG-1 does give good detail from its 14Mp sensor and its 5x optical zoom (28-140mm equivalent) is very handy.