Cnet has reviewed the Olympus SP-550 UZ and like it for its styling,its easily replaceable AA-sized batteries; 18x optical zoom , optical image stabilization and full manual mode. However they didn't like the lack of manual zoom, and hot-shoe adapter; plastic tripod receptacle and found the images at ISO 3,200 and ISO 5,000 unusable!

The 7.1 megapixel camera comes with image stabilization (CCD shift) and has a burst mode which can shoot up to 15 frames per second. The camera also has a 2.5� LCD with 230,000 pixels and uses BrightCapture Technology for better low light photography and movie mode. The Olympus SP-550 UZ includes 23 scene modes (including Portrait, Sports, Night Scene) and one also comes across Super Macro mode (from as close as 1cm) and P/A/S/M exposure modes.

In the end the website writes "Overall, we were pleased with the image quality right-out-of-the-camera (with the exception of the points mentioned above). There was slight barrel distortion at the wide end and minimal fringing in heavily backlit shots, but that is nothing surprising."