The Pentax Optio S4 is we think a stunning digital camera, normally we wend our way through a review picking out good and bad points to sum up a camera performance and we'll do the same with the S4 but we are somewhat smitten by the 4 mega pixel Optio S4 and its stylish technical excellence.

Why are we so taken by it? well for a start its a bit like a supermodel with a Degree in astrophysics, slim, stylish, impossible to keep your hands off and yet able to impress your techie mates, the first of our supermodel statistics is clearly shown in the Option S4's 115 gram weight and 85x52x20mm form, frankly most blokes have a wallet that measures more than that and that's just as well because while to Optio S4 is beautiful it will also cost you nearly £400 pounds.

But its worth it, don't run for cover as its soon apparent that our supermodel is even better inside, The 4 mega pixel resolution is plenty for most users giving a good reproduction even when enlarged or printed via one of the many photo quality printers and the technical excellence of the sliding lens that allows the 3x optical zoom or 35 - 105mm 35mm equivalent lens to fully retract into the main camera body.

The design not only looks great but it helps keep the size of the camera down and its so good that rival manufacturers have given up trying to emulate the S4's sliding mechanism and licensed the design from Pentax. The user interface is similar to the Optio S with a mixture of fully auto programmable modes for different types of lighting and speed requirements ideal for point and shoot users and the ability to driver through the menu system to set each feature separately but as with all phones of this size its not that easy to configure every setting and you soon get lazy.

Most owners of the Pentax Optio S4 will be point and shoot users and so the key areas for that kind of operation are focusing and flash, the Optio S4 has a sophisticated auto focus system which copes well with off centre image components and the LCD screen or viewfinder indicates which picture element is being used for the auto focus. The flash system on the S4 has 5 modes which allow for automatic or manual use of full flash or red eye reduction, in daily operation we found it best to leave this set to manual as the auto had a habit of assisting where it wasn't needed which gave reflections in widows or polished surfaces.

A 4 mega pixel camera needs a fair whack of storage too, the Optio S4 comes with a standard 11mb in built to the camera and a storage slot which will take SD or MMC media, during our time with the S4 we found it quickly ate storage a 128mb card seemed sufficient for most users who can get back to a PC to off load images, however if you do a lot of travelling it might be worth considering a bigger or multiple cards.

Another key factor if you intend to be a heavy user of the S4 is battery life, the removable battery is claimed to give 180 exposures with the LCD on full time and a 50% flash use, in our test the S4 outperformed this giving 250 shots and a real bonus is the accuracy of the battery meter which really does tell you what you've got left in plenty of time to decide to re charge.

Of course no digital camera is complete without a plethora of toys and so the Pentax Optio S4 is loaded with them. From the ability to capture and re play video to a world clock with alarm feature, plus some more camera based features like in built image trim and digital features to tint your images to give them that 1950's feel, nice! 

Captured image quality is excellent and gives you the ability to zoom and crop images when you get them back on your PC, but the strength of Pentax's mini marvel is the sum of its parts and the overall style and panache that wraps it up, we love the lens design the fully retracting feature is functional and ensures a lightweight compact camera and a is a great pub trick too. As we said at the start Technical excellence is standard on the S4 and you really can't go wrong at this price for a 4 mega pixel fully featured camera.

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