The cheap R742 is a cinch to use, but its image quality could be better. Available in silver, black and dark blue.

At $ 150, the HP Photosmart R742 is an affordable 7 megapixels. It is available in a choice of three colors - silver, black and dark blue - May but you can also find in other colours at some major retailers. For example, Best Buy offers a pale-blue version.

The camera is very easy to use, in part because it is so simple. The menus offer just a few options divided into categories for still capture, video recording, playback, and camera settings. Photographers May experts find these fundamental characteristics of limitation, but novices should be happy to leave the R742 in its fully automatic mode or choosing among the eight scene modes.

The R742 is similar to many other compact point-and-shoot cameras (another line of Photosmart R727 is, for example). A 2.5-inch LCD lies in the back, although the camera does not have an optical viewfinder, this screen is clear enough to compose your photos in all but the brightest sun. The hard metal body seems capable of a few blows, but the cursor mode on our test model was a bit loose - and seems a bit fragile.

The camera is very easy to use, in part because it is so simple. The menus offer just a few options divided into categories for still capture, video recording, playback, and camera settings. Photographers May experts find this limitation, but novices should be happy to leave the R742 in its fully automatic mode or choosing among the eight scene modes.

At this price, you do not want features such as Face Detection focusing automatically portraits. One focal point at the centre of the image is work to the former while taking photos with off-center subjects: hold the shutter halfway and focus then compose your images.

While the film is almost too simple, you get a lot of camera editing features to work on your images. The device allows you to remove red eye, crop and rotate, change the color of sounds, and implement simple borders. The built-in help system offers a few words of explanation for each operation, and many pages of useful information on the shooting with the camera. The unit also comes with the excellent HP Photosmart software for managing and editing your images. HP includes a one-bedroom charger for the lithium-ion battery, which has survived many complete 334 shots in our tests.

The R742 has produced well below average results in the magazine PC World Test Center assessments, however. Our plans are quite blurred, and we saw a lot of distortion in the fine details. But its autonomy of 334 photos was about 16 percent better than the average compact digital cameras we tested in the same batch.

The HP Photosmart R742 is an adequate choice for the early photographers or those who want to seize the moment with a minimum of noise, but you can get a much better camera for not much money.