Canon Digital Ixus 95 IS in Digital cameras

Canon's Ixus models have spent more time at the top of our A List than any other brand. And despite a wobble last year when they were knocked off by Sony, the Ixus 95 sees Canon regain its crown. It's clearly been focusing more on the design and usability of the Ixus instead of just stuffing in more megapixels. Build quality is lovely, with a solid but satin-slinky feel in the hand. It's super-compact too, giving the ultra-small Ixus 100 a good run for its money with a thickness of just 22mm along with credit-card-sized width and height.

Power it on and it's usually ready to take the shot before you are, with a start-up time of about 1.5 seconds. The lens gives you a 35mm-equivalent wide-angle field of view, which isn't as impressive as some others here but actually looks a little wider than the spec suggests. And the IS suffix - now standard on nearly the whole Ixus range - shows that optical image stabilisation is present and correct.

Elsewhere, Canon has stolen a march on the feature-stuffing merchants by adding one that's actually useful. In full-auto mode, you don't need explicitly to set the camera to macro mode to take a close-up shot. Simply bring it up close to your subject and the onscreen mode indicator flips over to the macro icon in grin-inducing fashion. Point it elsewhere and, after a second or two, it flips back to standard mode. It's impossible to miss a shot because you forgot you were set to macro. Genius.

Image quality is solid and well balanced, with good colour reproduction, sharp - but not over-sharp - output and, unlike a fair few other cameras this month, the lens keeps its corner focus at full wide-angle. Low-light performance is the fourth-best in the group, with ISO 1600 shots that we'd class as good for web-size use; if you print the results at A4, the graininess and detail lost to noise reduction will disappoint. Take indoor shots with flash, though, and the flattering colour balance means friends in the pub will appear 10% better-looking than they really are. And there's nothing wrong with that in our book.

It all adds up to another winning performance; this is clearly the best compact camera around for under £200.

Author: David Fearon