Bottom line – the Olympus Stylus 710 continues the tradition of the Stylus line by offering good image quality, great performance, and sleek design all packed in a weather resistant shell. This is one of our favorite models in this series, when you pick one up you’ll see why. It was a blast to use and I found very few problems in actual use. The image quality could be better and unfortunately it uses the incredibly slow xD memory cards that Olympus and Fujifilm designed (we hope someday they’ll switch to SD).

The Olympus Stylus 710 is a good option for the folks who need a little more ruggedness in a camera but don’t need a full waterproof camera. The 710 will survive a rain shower unscathed. The 7.1 megapixel capture resolution is more than enough to make a large print of a great landscape that you mountain biked 25 miles to get to. The camera is also stylish and compact enough to take out on a night on the town.

While there are some nice features on the Stylus 710, I was ultimately disappointed with its photo quality, which is the most important feature on any camera. If you’re only going to be making 4×6 prints and can live with the flaws I mentioned in this review, then I suppose it’s worth a look, but the bottom line is that there are better cameras out there in this class.

The Olympus Stylus 710 is a stylish package that needs better performance and picture quality.