The Ricoh CX3 is a versatile long-zoom compact with impeccable build quality, advanced features and outstanding performance. While it is only an incremental upgrade to the previous CX2 model it does bring important extras including 720p HD video recording, a 10.6 megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor and improved image quality. The Ricoh CX3 is a versatile long-zoom compact with impeccable build quality, advanced features and outstanding performance. While it is only an incremental upgrade to the previous CX2 model it does bring important extras including 720p HD video recording, a 10.6 megapixel back-illuminated CMOS sensor and improved image quality.

The design of the Ricoh CX3 is virtually identical to the previous CX2 model, so a lot of comments that we made about that camera will be repeated here. It weighs and measures exactly the same at 185g and 101.5mm (W) x 58.3mm (H) x 29.4mm respectively. This is a compact digital camera that easily fits in the palm of your hand, and you certainly won't notice carrying it in a trouser/shirt pocket or a handbag. The CX3 is available in either silver/lilac, grey/pink or a more serious black - Ricoh provided the latter for our review. It retains the same rather understated, retro look of previous R-series cameras. As soon as you pick it up, the Ricoh CX3 feels as solidly made, refined and purposeful as its predecessors, with a textured plastic handgrip area on the front and the bottom of the lens mounting area is cut off in line with the bottom of the camera, which still looks rather strange.

The Ricoh CX3's 10.7x zoom lens offers a 28-300mm focal range which places the CX3 in the now popular "travel zoom" category of cameras, although several rivals now offer 12x and even 15x lenses in a similarly sized body. When the lens is fully extended, the camera measures over 8cm in depth, but thankfully it retracts fully back into the body when it is turned off. The 28-300mm range is very versatile, covering everything from wide-angle landscapes to close-up action photos. The maximum apertures are respectable enough at f/3.5 at wide-angle and f/5.6 at telephoto. Helpfully the zoom mechanism becomes quicker as you progress through the range, a neat feature that really cuts down on waiting for the camera to do your bidding.

The Ricoh CX3 only has 10 external controls in total, leaving plenty of room for the large 3 inch LCD screen that dominates the back of the camera. The CX3's screen has a commendably high resolution of 920K dots, and it certainly shows, being noticeably sharper and brighter than cameras with standard 230K dot screens. Both text and images really come alive on a breath-taking display that's one of the best of any camera that we've ever reviewed.

There's a DSLR-like mode dial on top of the CX3 which lets you select from the Camera, DR, Continuous, Scene, new S-Auto and Movie options, plus two settings called MY1 and MY2 which allow you to configure the CX3 for different uses and provide quick access to each configuration (the camera remembers the settings when it's turned off). The S-Auto mode replaces the previous Easy shooting mode and is aimed firmly at beginners. Much like similar systems on rival cameras, when the CX3 is set to S-Auto it automatically identifies the type of scene being photographed and selects the appropriate scene mode (portrait, sports, night portrait, landscape, nightscape, macro mode), useful if you're not sure which mode to pick yourself. Like most automatic systems, it's not infallible, but does reliably pick one of the above scenes most of the time.