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Pentax may have managed to create the world's smallest mirrorless camera with this $800 ILC, but if image quality is more important than body size, the Q is not for you.

Its photo quality, performance, and feature set certainly don't justify the price premium, so you're really paying for whatever Pentax did to make the Q so small.

The Pentax Q is the most compact interchangeable lens camera you can buy. But a small sensor that limits fine detail in images, slow start up and processing performance, and a high sticker price hold this small shooter back.

For the rest of us, though, while the Pentax Q certainly has a lot to offer, it's not a camera we can recommend at the current list price, and with the current lens lineup.

While the camera certainly looks sweet enough, it just doesn’t have the inner guts to outperform its competitors. Plus the £600 asking price is more than most of its larger-sensor compadres.

The concept of the Pentax Q is a good idea, and with time and new lens additions the system could prove to be an interesting one. If the price came down to a more sensible level, it may even prove to be very interesting.

How much value do you put on the small size? Do you travel often? If so, this camera can be a valuable tool as when I traveled it was always in my pocket and ready to rock and roll.

It's small enough to slip inside a coat pocket, yet flexible enough to offer a DSLR-like take on the world. Ultimately though we just can't recommend that you spend DSLR money on compact camera image quality.