The Olympus SZ-11 is a compact superzoom announced in July 2011, going on sale that August. It belongs to Olympus's SZ series of pocketable travel zooms, which packed bridge-camera reach into flat-bodied compacts.
Its headline act is a 20x optical zoom spanning 25-500mm equivalent (f/3.0-6.9) in a body that still slips into a jacket pocket, backed by a 14MP CCD sensor, sensor-shift image stabilisation, a 3-inch 460k-dot LCD, 720p video and a set of in-camera Art Filters. There is no viewfinder, so everything happens on the rear screen.
The SZ-11 typifies the pre-smartphone travel compact: enormous zoom range at a friendly price, sold in quantity through UK high-street and supermarket channels, and now recirculating as an inexpensive step up in reach from a phone. Image quality at the 500mm end is soft and best in strong light, but as a cheap holiday camera the reach-per-pound is hard to argue with.
Check the zoom above all: run it repeatedly from 25mm to 500mm equivalent and back, watching for hesitation, off-centre extension or lens-error messages, because a jammed telescoping zoom writes the camera off. Shoot a plain bright frame to expose CCD smear or dead pixels, confirm the stabiliser visibly steadies the live view at full stretch, test the pop-up flash, and make sure the LI-50B battery holds charge and a charger is included - at this price point, missing accessories cost more than the camera.