Good to slightly slow speed for a consumer camera.

The Pentax Optio W10's performance ranges from fair to slightly slow, beginning with its slow start-up time of 2.9 seconds. Shutter lag at wide angle and telephoto is fair, but "prefocus" times (half-pressing and holding down the shutter button before the final exposure) are better, with a shutter delay of 0.12 second. Shot-to-shot cycle times are sluggish, at about 2.51 seconds for large/fine JPEGs, and the camera captures frames continuously at this rate. Continuous-mode speed is also on the slower side, at a bit over one frame/second, though the camera captures frames continuously at that rate. However, a High Speed mode captures 3.42 frames per second for a total of five frames, though only at the 2,048 x 1,536-pixel resolution. The flash has an average recycle time at 5 seconds after a full-power shot. Connected to a computer, download speeds are fast enough to negate a separate card reader, but not as fast as other digital cameras out on the market. Bottom line, the Optio W10 is responsive enough for most family photo opportunities, but its standard continuous shooting mode is a bit slow for sports or wiggly kids, and standard shot-to-shot cycle times are a bit slow as well.

Battery
Fair battery life with the custom rechargeable battery.

The Pentax Optio W10 uses a custom rechargeable LiIon battery for power. Though battery life is pretty good, I strongly recommend picking up a spare battery and keeping it freshly charged and on-hand for extended outings.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on either a fresh set of disposable batteries or a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))

Storage
The Optio W10 accepts SD/MMC memory cards, though no card is included; 10.5MB RAM is built into the camera.

We strongly recommend buying at least a 256MB card, preferably a 512MB one, to give yourself extra space for extended outings.