Toshiba Digital Camera – Not Recommended – Discontunued

I have owned this camera for 2 years now and it finally bit the dust.

I still think it holds the title for best bang for the buck in the 3-megapixel range. I really enjoyed all of the manual features and fine-tuning capabilities. The remote control is a great feature for group photos. The long exposure times can generate some very interesting night shots. In short, I don’t have any complaints about the features of the camera.

Last weekend the camera died. I got just over 2 years and 2000 pictures out of it. I researched the failure to see if there was a known fix out there on the Internet. No such luck.

I did discover that there seems to be some serious reliability issues with this particular model. I found 1 good piece of advice to find out how reliable a camera is: check the completed auctions on your favorite auction website and see what percentage of the cameras being sold are non-functional or are manufacturer reconditioned units. If found about 60% of the 65 units sold were dead or rebuilt PDR-3300’s. I checked the Canon A70 for comparison – only about 7% of the 320 units sold were dead or rebuilt.

My recommendation would be to either purchase an extended warranty or just don’t expect a lot of life out of the camera. It sounds like I did pretty well with a 2 year run. I’ll miss this camera, but won’t buy another Toshiba.

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