When nasty little digital cameras come good – I've been tripping the plastic fantastic on a quest for a budget point-and-shoot compact that actually takes okay photos

Woohoo! I bought a Mutrain Digital Camera X10 that claimed to have 48 megapixels under the bonnet, for just $30 / £25 at Amazon. Exciting times – it even came complete with an internal Li-ion battery and a microSD card, so there was nothing extra to buy and it was all ready to go.

As it turned out, it was all ready to go straight in the bin.

As some say, “If something looks too good to be true, then it probably is.” I tried some other super-cheap digital cameras with the same result. Image quality was so incredibly dire that I wasn’t capturing precious moments to keep for a lifetime, just taking pictures on a view and delete cycle, and generally failing in my pursuit of the best cheap cameras.

Time to try something different. I gave some of the best disposable film cameras a go. The results were actually better and at least the pictures had a kind of nostalgia to them, a bit like listening to old scratchy records for mood music. Ultimately though, they smacked a bit of ‘single-use plastic’ to me, and that didn’t sit altogether well.

I’d pretty much given up in my search for a cheap camera that I’d actually want to keep, but then something came along to change my mind, in the diminutive shape of the Yachica City 100.

Okay, it’s not all that cheap at around $209 / £220 but although it’s 10 times as expensive as some ultra-cheap cameras, it’s way more than 10 times as good.

Proving that kids know it all, my grandson took one look at it and said, “Ooh, cool selfie camera.” And sure enough, it has a flip-around screen that can face forwards for selfies and vlogging. It also has a 13 megapixel image sensor made by none other than Sony, a 3x motorized zoom lens, and a whole lot more going for it. It actually takes very passable stills and video footage, with a massive step up in quality, and it’s genuinely fun to use.

This little Yashica has made me completely reevaluate what can be achieved with a ‘cheap’ digital compact camera. It’s something of a game-changer.

Bottom line? I think the cheapest digital cameras out there are a false economy. Spend a little more, reap the rewards and feel the joy.