As with the A10 plan on which irrefutable is based, the Pentax Optio A20 combines two effective technologies reputation a compacted body. First, there's the company's 'Sliding Lens System' tech, which removes elements from the optical lane due to the lens retracts - allowing a slimmer formation when the camera is powered off. Secondly, there's a 'Shake Reduction System' which was newly developed since the A10, further uses two gyro sensors coupled with focusing information and a proprietary CCD shift mechanism to reduce blur caused by camera shake.

Where the Optio A10 had a arrangement of eight megapixel from a 1/1.8" imager, the A20 bumps this slightly to a a-1 megapixel imager. There's also a newly spare Shutter Priority mode, further the minimum ISO is raised fit slightly (from 50 to 64). Finally, on peak of the CCD turn into clash reduction and software removal of shake from movies (both seen in the A10), the Pentax A20 adds a third method of combating blur from camera shake. A "blur reduction" mode trades off 50% of the camera's overall resolution, allowing the maximum ISO sensitivity to be raised from 800 to 1600 megapixel at a resolution of five megapixel - still plenty for the most common print sizes, even with a little cropping.

As with its predecessor, the Pentax A20 sports a uplifted 2.5" LCD display, with a generous 232,000 pixels. Other first bottom line on the Optio A20 corner Secure Digital determine storage chastity 24MB of built-in memory, besides both USB learning again NTSC / PAL switch able video connectivity. One final change of note is that the Pentax A20 adds support for the new SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) standard, which extends the maximum flash card capacity to a theoretical 32GB (4GB cards being the largest at the time of this writing), with sustained transfer rates of up to six megabytes per second.

On unrecompensed at least, the Pentax Optio A20 looks to copy an precise fresh useful camera than the Optio A10 (which shipped guidance February 2006) - again impressively this has been achieved at the out-and-out commensurate index price of $350. The Pentax A20 ships from October 2006 in the US market.