The $101 Yashica Tank could be the perfect way to hop on the digi-cam trend — I tested it on vacation to see what it can do

I’m a sucker for a cheap compact camera, and on the surface, the Yashica Tank ticks all the boxes. It’s fun, cute and easy to use, so could it be the best cheap camera for you? It’s a good option for anyone who wants a portable camera for taking quick snaps with friends without breaking the bank on a camera like the viral Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III. Of course, you shouldn’t expect image quality like an expensive compact: it has more of a Y2K vibe. It also has a 180º flip screen to easily take selfies, and the controls are simple.

But it feels a little flimsy due to the low price point, and the lack of optical zoom means that if you want to zoom in, you have to sacrifice image resolution. The switch at the top of the camera for video and photos only lets you playback one format at a time, which is annoying, and occasionally, the shutter response is delayed.

That said, I still had a lot of fun with this camera, so to find out more about it, keep reading my full Yashica Tank review.

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Yashica Tank review: Specs

Yashica Tank review: Price & availability

The Yashica Tank is available for purchase directly from the Yashica online store for $101 / £75. It’s available in four different colors, including Pink Marshmallow, Sky Blue, Black and Brown.

The camera very much resembles the Kodak PIXPRO C1, which costs $99. This camera has the same tiny style, a 12MP sensor, and you can use built-in digital filters, like on the Yashica. But if you want something for a similar price with superior zoom capabilities, you should check out the Kodak PIXPRO FZ45 ($99). This camera has optical zoom and digital zoom, whereas the Tank only has digital zoom, which decreases the quality of the image when zoomed in.

If you’re looking for a hobby camera to throw in your bag for taking fun pictures with friends, the Tank is fine. But, if you want something that can actually take good photos, then you’d need to spend more money and look at a camera like the Lumix ZS99 ($499). The ZS99 has more resolution, a 30x optical zoom to get great zoomed-in shots, and is still compact enough to take with you everywhere.

Or if you need something for adventurous trips that can withstand a little roughhousing, then check out the rugged 16MP Pentax WG-1000 ($196). It can withstand water submersion and drops from height. With that said, the Tank is good for hobby photography with friends.

Yashica Tank review: Design

You can’t deny it, the Yashica Tank is incredibly cute. It’s a compact camera, so, as that moniker implies, it’s very small. In fact, it’s smaller than my iPhone 17, measuring just 3.9 x 2.2 x 0.1 inches. This meant I could throw it in my bag and shove it in my pocket without worrying about it taking up too much space. It weighs just 3.7 ounces, which is lighter than the Kodak PIXPRO C1 (5.2 ounces).

Despite the “Tank” name, the Yashica feels delicate. As you might expect from the cheaper price point of this camera and its light weight, it feels a little flimsy. While it doesn’t feel like it’s going to break on you, it feels more like a toy than a camera. The Pentax WG-1000, for example, feels a lot sturdier and more reliable.

The front of the camera sports a faux leather finish made from silicone, which is very comfortable to hold, especially when using it in the selfie position. The flash is located at the top right of the camera, just above the lens. The base of the camera also has a tripod mount next to the battery compartment.

I have the camera in the light pink color, which can be found on the website labeled under ‘Pink Marshmallow.’ This name should tell you all you need to know about this camera — it’s just for fun. The pink color reminds me of the compact camera I had when I was six years old… and the results are pretty similar too.

Ports

The Yashica Tank only has a USB-C port for charging and data transfer. It’s great to have this universal port as I was able to plug it in to charge anywhere. The camera uses a microSD card and has no internal storage.

Monitor

If you want to use the Tank for vlogging or taking selfies, the handy 3-inch LCD screen flips up at a 180º angle. It’s important to note, though, that it has a 360 x 640 resolution and is very pixelated, so you won’t get a good idea of what the image looks like until you download the files.

The monitor itself looks exactly like the screen of the Kodak PIXPRO C1 and moves in the same way. This LCD screen is very bright, and even on the lowest brightness setting, it was hurting my eyes in low-light settings.

Weather-sealing

The Tank has no official durability rating, so be careful not to drop it or get it wet. For added protection, the camera comes with a small cloth bag that covers the lens and screen, but it won’t do much in adverse conditions. For a weather-sealed option, you should try the Pentax WG-1000, which can withstand drops from a height and is waterproof.

Yashica Tank review: Controls

The Yashica Tank’s controls are very easy to get the hang of. Most of the controls can be found on the back, just to the left of the screen. At the top, you’ll find a dial to zoom in and out, and below this, a thumbrest when using the camera one-handed. You turn the flash on or set it to auto by pushing the joystick upwards. This joystick is also easy to use when navigating through the menu settings. Below this, you’ll find buttons for the display, menu, gallery and bin.

The menu is easy to use, and you can change color filters here, which is particularly handy when shooting. During setup, I made sure to go into the menu first and make sure all of my settings suited how I use the camera. For me, that meant lowering screen brightness to conserve battery, altering the aspect ratio, and setting stabilization and focus settings.

At the top of the camera, you’ll find the shutter button on the far right, the power button in the middle, and a switch on the left. This switch toggles the camera between video and stills modes. To record with this camera, you have to switch to the video mode and then use the shutter button to start and stop recording.

You can also only view the videos you take when the switch is on video, and you can only view the pictures when the switch is on photo, which was confusing at first, since I was wondering where all of my photos had disappeared to.

Yashica Tank review: Lens

The Yashica Tank has a fixed focal length of 4.05mm. This is best suited to landscapes, group photos, and street photography, rather than close-up, detailed shots. The aperture of the camera is fixed at f/1.8, meaning a fairly shallow depth of field. The wide aperture is beneficial for low light, though. In my testing, it worked well across most lighting settings, apart from very extreme bright areas — here, it would’ve been useful to have a variable or narrower aperture to reduce overexposure.

You don’t get any optical zoom on the camera; instead having to make do with 8x digital zoom. Digital zoom essentially crops into an image to digitally enlarge it. The small 12MP sensor doesn’t give you much resolution in the first place, but you quickly lose a lot of those pixels the more you zoom in, resulting is a low-res image.

If you want a camera with a better zoom function, I would recommend a compact camera with an optical zoom as it retains the camera’s full sensor resolution at longer focal lengths. I’d suggest the Lumix ZS99, which boasts a whopping 30x optical zoom.

Yashica Tank review: Image quality

The Yashica Tank has a 12MP 1/2.8-inch CMOS sensor, which is just a little lower than the Kodak PIXPRO C1 and its 13MP sensor. For a compact with better quality, the Kodak PIXPRO WPZ2 ($179) has a 16MP sensor. The Tank can use built-in software to upscale (interpolate) internally to 24MP or 36MP, although this isn’t as good as having more actual pixels to begin with.

You can’t make any adjustments to the shutter speed of the camera. And on the note of the shutter, there’s a lot of lag between pressing the button and the shutter actually shutting. I often ended up with pictures of the floor due to this. To combat this, I manually turned on the shutter sound in settings and made sure to listen out for it — only moving the camera after I’d heard it.

Any adjustments to the ISO can be made in the camera’s menu. You can select between Auto, ISO 100, 200 and 400. In Auto, the ISO range is 110-6400, which is pretty fine for a camera like this and gives you some flexibility in lower light.

Image quality on a 12MP compact camera is never going to be the best. The Tank is no exception. Since compact cameras are making a huge comeback amongst younger generations as a bit of fun to capture a vintage, retro aesthetic, you don’t need much more than what you get from the Tank. Generally, the camera does a good job of keeping everything sharp.

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When using the standard filter setting on the camera, the images felt pretty dull, as you can see in the gallery above, and I don’t think this reflected the color I was seeing in person very well.

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As you can see from the pictures above, the camera gives you the option to use color filters that are kind of like film simulations. These include monotone, negative and lomo. Lomo (as seen in the images below) was my favorite option to use as it made all of the colors in the images a lot more saturated, which was perfect for taking pictures of the brightly colored streets of Porto.

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The camera performs best in settings where the lighting is consistent. However, in scenes with a high dynamic range, where there are dark shadows as well as bright highlights, the camera struggles to capture detail across the full tonal spectrum.

In the image gallery below, the first image is straight out of the camera. In the shadows, some detail is lost to black, but some of this was recoverable in post-production, as visible in the second image — with the shadows brightened up, extra detail was revealed around the chairs on the left, although shadows were quite noisy. The highlights are also blown out in the brightest spots, on the tops of the umbrellas in the middle. However, for the price of the camera, this is reasonable, and I was expecting a lot worse.

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In the images below, you can see how the Tank’s 8x digital zoom works. A lot of sharpness and clarity was lost as I zoomed into the church and the cloudy park behind, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. It won’t win any awards, but if you want a quick snap of some far-off scenery for yourself, then it’s good enough.

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The minimum focusing distance is 10cm, so it’s not the best for getting close-up shots, and there’s no macro mode if you want to get really detailed shots. But again, it’s good enough for everyday photography, which is primarily what the Tank is about.

The autofocus on the Tank uses an AF assist lamp, which you can turn on or off. But at times, this lamp would be captured in the images, leaving me with a red hue over everything.

I found the autofocus to be good, and thanks to the camera’s flip-up screen, I was able to get my selfie positioning right for the focus to lock in.

Yashica Tank review: Video

While I mentioned earlier that you could use the Yashica Tank for video, I wouldn’t recommend it. The camera can shoot in 4K at 30fps which is actually very good for a camera of this size, but the electronic stabilization is shoddy at best, and it picks up on every little movement you make.

Yashica Tank sample video - YouTube

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As you can see in the above video, it’s very hard to keep the camera steady as I pan around, and when zooming, this becomes even worse. Also, the wind buffeting in the microphone makes it virtually impossible to hear anything.

Yashica Tank review: Battery life

The Yashica Tank houses an 800mAh battery, which can capture 220 shots per charge. This would be passable… if it were true. My camera drained a lot faster than that. I had to charge the camera after about 50 shots. Granted, I was using the flash and also had the LCD screen on the highest brightness. When the brightness was turned down, the battery seemed to last a lot longer. You can get a lot more battery out of the Pentax WG-1000, which has enough power for 300 still images.

The camera can be charged via the USB-C port. It only took around an hour and a half to fully charge in my testing. There’s an indicator light to let you know when the Tank is charged.

Yashica Tank review: Verdict

The Yashica Tank is a fairly good choice for anyone looking to hop on the retro camera trend. It’s cheap enough that it’s not going to break the bank, and its compact style means it can easily be thrown in your bag or put in your pocket to take anywhere. The camera has a 180º flip screen, which is perfect for taking selfie-style photos, and the easy-to-use controls mean that anyone can pick up and use the camera. The image quality is fairly respectable, too, giving me good pictures of scenery and selfies, while the filters make stylized photos a piece of cake.

However, with the low price tag comes cheap build quality. The video to the camera switch on the top of the camera to view each format is annoying. The lack of optical zoom also means that it’s only really suited to wider scenes, as when using the 8x digital zoom, you’ll be sacrificing lots of resolution. You need to get a camera with optical zoom for better zoomed-in quality, like the Kodak PIXPRO WPZ2. I also found the Tank’s delayed shutter annoying at times.

But with that said, if you need a camera that’s cheap enough that you don’t need to worry about it getting damaged, and you just want to take fun photos on your travels and with friends, you can do worse than the Yashica Tank.