Labs

Canon's most affordable digital camera is available in blue, red or silver. Its chunky shape isn't ideal for pockets and handbags, and at 215g with two AA batteries inserted, it's heavy. The battery door feels flimsy, and Canon has made other cost-saving measures, including the 2in, 86,000-pixel screen and the lack of dedicated zoom controls. The up and down navigation buttons double as zoom controls, which has annoying repercussions, as zooming out after taking a picture made the camera think we wanted

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to delete the previous shot. With a 5-megapixel sensor it has one of the lowest resolutions here, but the 4x zoom more than compensates and is a real benefit next to the 3x zooms on other cameras.

The PowerShot's performance is excellent, taking just 1.7 seconds to turn on and shoot and 1.4 seconds between pictures. However, the flash took eight seconds to recharge between shots. Continuous mode ran at an impressive 1.6 frames per second (fps), but the video mode is limited to 10fps at the maximum 640x480 resolution.

The 5-megapixel resolution had little discernible impact on image quality, and the A460 scored better than average for image detail. However, with a physically small charge-coupled device (CCD), its pictures suffer from more noise than those of other cameras. ISO 400 is the highest available sensitivity, and it gave grainy results. Colours were excellent in favourable lighting, but low-light photography without the flash was often under-exposed.

The PowerShot is a reasonable camera for the price, but you can get better if you spend a little more.