Mustek goes mainstream with its latest camera, but is it already too dear?
A sub-£200 five megapixel digicam with a 3x optical zoom is the latest addition to the Mustek stable. Better known for scanners, Mustek has featured a line up of mainly budget-priced sub-£100 digital still cameras and MPEG4 digital video cameras. But Mustek's new MDC6500Z looks like a mainstream compact digital still camera, indeed resembling the Fujifilm FinePix F440/450 at a glance.
According to Mustek, "The MDC6500Z is a multifunctional digital camera available for £198 including VAT on www.redstore.com. With up to 6.5 Mega picture resolution (Fine: 2912 x 2208 pixel) the camera has 6 Built-in scene modes (portrait, landscape, sports, night landscape, night portrait and sunset), and Digital effects (b & w, Sepia) and auto image rotation. The MDC6500Z isn’t only a Digital Still Camera but can also be used as a Digital Video Camera, Voice Recorder, PC Cam, USB portable disk and a SD/MMC card reader. All this in a pocket sized device with a 32MB internal memory, build-in microphone and speaker and a 1.5” TFT LCD display.
Mustek is guilty of marketing the MDC6500Z as a 6.5MP resolution camera, but its native resolution is actually 'only' 5MP. Until last week, we'd have been impressed with the price and specification of the MDC6500Z, but Acer now has a 5MP contender, the CS-5530, which sports and enormous 2.5 inch LCD monitor and for just £30 more you can opt for the 6MP CR-6530. Anyone who reckoned there wasn't anything left to be squeezed out digital cameras after a year of dramatic price reductions, might want to rethink!
