It's natural to be a little dubious of a digital camera when you hear that it doubles up as a portable multimedia player. After all, most people would agree that if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly. Start meddling into different fields of gadgetry and there's the danger of losing focus on the main role of the object; in this case, to take photos.

So it was with a large amount of scepticism that the Samsung i8 was taken out of its box, but on first view of the camera it was difficult not to warm to it straight away. One thing is obvious with this: Samsung means business.

Available in four different colours - white, black, pink and blue - the more vibrant shades may not appeal to all but it's fair to say that the body quality is excellent. Comprised mainly of coated plastic, the Samsung i8 promises to be protected against external shocks and scratches.

So much plastic has the danger of making a camera feel cheap and flimsy, but this one feels almost luxurious in the hand, with the only issue being that the lens lies flush with the camera body. Unless you're always conscious of your finger position you may find a little index digit sneaking into the frame.

With no viewfinder, shots are framed using the 2.7-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD Monitor. However, there was no issue shooting in bright conditions, as the picture was bright and colourful. Situated on the rear, too, are all the controls needed to set camera shooting modes, control the 1.0x-5.0x Digital Zoom and access the playback and Photo Style Selector options, the latter giving you the chance to shoot in various colour modes like sepia and ‘negative'.

On the top of the camera, as well as a shutter and power button there's also a Face Detection button. If you turn this on before you shoot a portrait, the i8 will detect a face or faces in the frame and optimise accordingly. With this powered up, the results of portrait images are impressive. Skin tones are soft but clear with an accurate tonal range. If you regularly find yourself snapping a self-portrait or just bundling a load of mates together and pointing the camera towards you without framing a shot, then there's also a Self-Shot mode.

Shooting Modes are easy to select by pressing the ‘M' button on the back, and there's a good selection of options ranging from the common ‘Portrait' and ‘Landscape' modes to the more unusual like ‘Food' and ‘Café'. You can also access a ‘Fun' menu where you can capture some more unusual, quirky images like a cartoon mode, complete with speech bubbles if you want to create something a little different.

Image quality on the Samsung i8 is fantastic, capturing vibrant colours full of sharp detail that's relatively noise-free. Metering is accurate and the good choice of scene modes makes capture painless, even for those without many camera skills.

Under the same ‘M' menu it's also possible to access the Samsung i8's multimedia options - and this is where the camera jumps into a league of its own. Here you can access and play your MP3 tunes, view your PMP videos, text documents and a Travel Guide.

First up is the MP3 player. It's easy to add MP3 files onto the Samsung i8 by simply dragging and dropping your required files into the MP3 folder, found when you explore the camera's drive when attached to your computer via the USB cord. Without the headphones plugged in, the sound will emit from the camera's speaker, with pleasing results.

The camera comes complete with its own set of in-ear headphones, which, although not the most comfortable nor the best in sound quality, gives you the option to listen to your music in private. Once again, the sound that emits from the i8 is well rounded and distortion-free. It's possible to use your own more advanced headphones, although you will always need the USB adapter cord as there's no solo headphone socket on the camera body.

To upload video you will need to use the camera's bundled Samsung Converter software. Once you have the application up and running, video conversion is pretty self-explanatory and you merely have to drag the required file into the window space, check the export settings and press ‘OK'. The quality and size of the video is impressive and it's a joy to watch your own files on something so compact yet generous in screen size.

Finally, the Travel Guide feature is a little gimmicky, with only short snippets of information on selected countries and cities, but it would be a great research source for quick geography projects or trivia questions.

The Samsung i8 neatly packs an excellent quality camera and MP3 and video media player into a stylish body. Although the i8 is comprised of plastic it feels solid and elegant. As well as excellent picture quality, the multimedia features on the Samsung i8 are reliable, easy to operate and offer good sound and video results. This would be an excellent gift for a teenager, or a backpacker endeavouring to keep their luggage streamlined.