Pentax Optio W80

Opinion: Bought it as a replacement to Pentax M20 that got damaged while skating.

It has the same sensor as the w90 which as of now is about £100 more expensive. Got the camera for £130 which is good deal for a water proof camera. I did go through the camera review here and it didn't seem good.

I'm using it as a secondary camera. its good for outdoor daytime. indoor is reasonable at ISO 400 without flash.

if you've accidentally deleted pics, you can recover them as long as you haven't taken any new pics after deleting.

battery life is good for a day of shooting as a secondary camera. i've bought a spare battery.

i wanted a waterproof camera so that i can take pics in any weather without any fear of damaging the camera.

I chose this camera over the others for two reasons. i've used pentax and liked it for being different from others. for eg. m20 was AA powered. this is my third pentax over the years. secondly canon d10 although being a better camera. its horrible looking.

most of the drawbacks of pentax m20 have been rectified in this camera making it more user friendly.

if you are considering it as a primary camera... i wouldn't advice it. canon ixus 130 / 210 would be a better P&S camera.

as a secondary all weather tough camera. this would be the perfect choice

Opinion: Very nica P&S with no manual or priority exposition but a lot of programs and manual control over a lot of parameters instead.
Slim and light but very sturdy.
Lens is protected by a fixed glass that is slightly arretrated to protect it from scratches.
Lens is sharp and versatile and resolution is fine. Some evident barrel distortion at wide end of the lens.
There is a high amount of noise in pictures, even at 400 ISO, easy to filter in PS anyway.
Not a real problem if you do even a minimal automatic postprocessing.
Very good 720P movies, but as in many other cameras no optical zooming during movie.
Buy it if you want a versatile P&S with a rugged body and like not protuding lens cameras. Manual focus and panfocus very good for candid photography.

Opinion: I bought this camera in duty-free outbound to the Maldives, and was willing to risk wasting £120 given the cost of going there in the first place. All in all it was a risk worth taking.
I own DSLRs and use those for proper photos, but there's no way I was going to be spending the thousands required for DSLR cases and underwater lighting when all I wanted was some half-decent photo and video while snorkelling... and in that regard the Pentax came up trumps.

Would I recommend it as a primary camera? Absolutely not!
Its feature set is quite impressive for the money: it does the usual set of photo modes, face detection, smile detection, basic post-shot editing, 720p video, and yes it's not half bad underwater. The zoom range is pretty good too. However, its noise in even medium lighting - let alone bad lighting - is awful. The underwater footage we got was exactly as we wanted, and dry video was great too: in terms of lighting though we were in shallow equatorial water; I'm not sure how well it would do without such strong sunlight.
Photos are noticeably sub-par compared to an similarly specified 12M Casio Exilim in all conditions.
Battery life is reasonable. We were initially frustrated at being given battery warnings every time we went out snorkelling, but realised that after shooting non-stop photo and video for 2+ hours, it's actually not bad.

Would I recommend it as a niche/backup camera? Sure.
It's cheap, cheerful, and solidly built; and it does a fair job of what it claims to do. The price is reasonable for what you get in return.

Opinion: I used this camera for a race/challenge that involved mud, dirty water, fire, snow and a lot of climbing. It got knocked around quite a bit and not only survived but my pictures are beautiful. The need to make sure your setting is correct for your current lighting conditions but it is not only easy to do, it's great that the settings don't automatically reset when you turn it off. I've used it a lot on the beach, in the water and for regular photos and every photo is sharp with great colors. It's very compact and easy to take along to the kind of places/adventures where you would need this kind of tough camera.

Opinion: For the price at $180.00 from adorama it is a great
camera. Very clear images at low ISO, video is OK but
not
great but when you factor you can use it in any
weather
condition it is a very good value.
Has intervalometer built in for both still and video worth
the price of camera alone. Size is great.
Also Pentax gives you a great printed manual that
details ALL the great features.

Opinion: I bought this after I dropped my Canon TX1 thinking drop proof would be good. My Canon had 7.1 megapixels so I figured the 12.1 megapixel would at the very least take as good a pictures. I knew the zoom would be half of what I was used to, but it still video taped in HD 6:9 so it should at the very least have equal video quality. HOW VERY WRONG I WAS! My broken camera with serious focus issues took some amazing video at a concert where this camera took extraordinarily noisy video. I tested it at home with the exact picture taken with my canon. The pentax pics were softer and noisy no matter what setting I used, even when I set it to exactly what the canon was at. Needless to say, I took it back and am spending my money on fixing my canon which took amazing pics and video. It did have interesting features, but if the pics don't look good, there isn't much point. I never took it under water so I can't comment on that part.

Opinion: Camera jam packed with lots of features I wanted in a take everywhere / do everything camera for my active lifestyle of canoeing, camping, skiing, hiking, etc. All-weather, High resolution, 5x optical, IS, 720p video, 3:2 aspect, interval shooting, etc...

It's a great camera when my activities can't afford the weight of my DSLR gear, but it is by no means any kind of replacement.