Rugged cameras used to be big, bulky and usually built to look like if a Hummer and a pocket-point-n-shoot cam had off-spring.

Scary, but true.

They all did the job, but were usually 40%-50% thicker and bulkier than a point-n-shoot of the same caliber. They all cost more too. Sure you could sometimes get a plastic enclosure for your pocket shooter. They did the job being water-proof, dust-proof, but not always shock proof. But they almost always cost the same as your camera or sometimes a little more.

Today, you can still get the bulky underwater enclosures for most cameras, but for pocket shooters, you’ve got lots and lots of options.

Just about everyone from Sony to Fuji have their own rugged pocket shooter that looks very much like their non-rugged pocket cousins. Similar optics, similar designs really make you look twice (or more) before you realize you’re dealing with something akin to a photographic tough SUV.

Along with physical designs, these shooters have slimmed down in price as well. Some can be had under $180. Price and performance combined, you can hardly tell they’re “whatever” proof now.

The rugged-cams all share similar qualities, although there are camera specific features such as light filters and shooting modes that are slightly different camera to camera. However, most of the ones we looked at all support underwater, shock-proof, freeze-proof and dust-proof capabilities.

They’ll usually be water-proof up to at least 10ft for about an hour or more. Shock-proof from a fall from around 5 feet (with Olympus and Casio clocking in at a little bit more). Temperature resistant from below zero Celsius to more than boiling. Dust-proof is something we’re highly skeptical about, but all manufacturers claim that sand and dust is kept out of the camera optics. Not sure about scratching the lenses though.

Our favorites come from Sony, Olympus and Fuji Film (although other makers have “tough” versions as well, with honorable mentions to Casio Elixm models).

On the lower side of the price scale comes the Olympus Stylus Tough 3000 or 6000. Both available in a ton of colors, good response time and all use SD/micro SD cards. You can find these priced from $179-$230. At CostCo they have a kit with carrying case, 4GB SD card going for around $180 on the 3000. Not a bad deal.

If you prefer the Fuji’s, we find these have slightly better optics. Same features, but can be had at a much lower price. Fuji FinePix XP10 sports a 5x optical zoom, which is probably the best out of the ones we’ve had a chance to play with.

Sony’s a bit more expensive than the rest. Their almost always at the upper end of the price spectrum and get knocked for not having the performance to back it up. With the TX-5, it’s almost true.

TX-5 goes for around $320. It’s probably the thinnest rugged camera out of the three we’re looking at. Unlike the others, this Sony does have special on-camera filtering to balance out underwater pool/ocean, so you get a clean picture. While most of the cameras I’ve suggested here support panorama images, the Sony is the only one that has “sweep” panorama and on-camera digital stitching, so you don’t need to do anything with in PC software.

The TX-5 also sports the most on-board camera features in our opinion. You get light filters to clean up images if you’re underwater in a pool or on a sunny beach along with many other features that made us happy.

We liked it so much, we’re getting one to review. We’ll run it through the paces when we get it and post a full review.

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