A decade ago, you could buy cheap-but-good point-and-shoots from the all main camera makers. But now, smartphones have them killed off. Instead, if you search for ‘cheap digital camera’, all you’ll find is a load of generic unbranded models.
But might one of these cameras actually be any good? To find out, I decided to buy this silver-and-black retro-styled model, which looks like a ‘fake X100’. Styling cameras to make them look like much more expensive models is nothing new, and this one is clearly trying to make unwary buyers think it’s the wildly popular . It tends to be listed on Amazon by marketplace sellers for about £110.
But I sourced it from AliExpress instead, where it came in at under £40, including shipping from China. Come to think of it, that probably wasn’t a good sign. Listings for this camera tend to include a jumble of keywords, along the lines of “ “, but no actual product name.
When it arrived, it turned out to be labelled simply as ‘ ’, and be made by the Shenzhen Sonida Digital Technology Co Ltd. I wasn’t expecting it to be particularly good, but nothing prepared me for quite how bad it’s turned out to be. Of course, this camera isn’t a ‘fake’ as such.
Neither the maker, nor any seller with a shred of sense, is going to associate it with the Fujifilm X100 series. But just take a look at the slideshow below showing the Sonida DC202 side-by-side the Fujifilm X100VI. It really isn’t hard to work out where the design inspi.