Product Reviews

Wireless network adaptors are cropping up on all sorts of devices, but Canon's Digital Ixus Wireless is only the second camera we've seen to contain one. To some it might seem like a pointless gimmick, but we like the idea of simply pressing a couple of buttons to copy pictures to the PC rather than grappling with the impenetrable tangle of cables that loiter by our PC cases. Being able to take a picture and see it on the computer desktop almost instantly is an entertaining novelty and could be genuinely useful on a photo shoot with a WiFi-enabled laptop.

The built-in wireless adaptor uses the older 802.11b standard, so it isn't particularly fast. We measured 0.25MB/s, which equates to around 7.5 seconds per photo at maximum quality settings; nowhere near the 2MB/s we achieved for USB transfers. Still, WEP and WPA encryption are both supported, and the camera can join an infrastructure network or make a direct ad hoc connection to a PC.

There's a second wireless adaptor in the box, but this works only with PictBridge-compatible printers and not with PCs. This seems frivolous to us. How many people print photos straight from their camera without checking them first on their PC screen? To transfer images wirelessly to a PC, the PC will need its own wireless adaptor (or to be connected to a wireless network) and be running Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

The wireless connection is set up using the USB cable and the supplied software. We found the process straightforward but only after we had located the instructions, which were hidden on a different CD-ROM to the installation software. Wireless

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transfers were then easy. A couple of button pushes on the camera were all it took to make a connection and for the Canon software on the PC to spring to life and copy pictures across or display them within seconds of them being taken. It doesn't matter if you shoot faster than the wireless transfers can keep up with, because pictures are also recorded to SD card; the wireless transfers catch up eventually.

It's even possible to operate the camera remotely from the PC, complete with full control over camera settings and a live preview with an impressively low 80ms lag. This is a fun feature, although you'd need to turn off all the camera's sound effects and cover up the flashing lights before you'd have much success with Canon's suggested application of wildlife photography.

Otherwise, the camera is a typical Digital Ixus. It's smart, compact, seems robust and is quick and easy to use. Exposure control is limited to ISO settings and exposure compensation, but both of these are accessible without excessive menu delving. The camera can take a photo within two seconds of starting up and continue indefinitely at the same rate, increasing to three seconds with the flash enabled.

Battery life is disappointing, though. We got 230 shots with wireless swiched off, and this dropped to 148 when it was switched on. A second battery will set you back around £26.

Image quality was consistently high in our tests. Pictures were impeccably sharp and smooth areas of colour were exceptionally pure. Complex, textured areas displayed some side effects of noise reduction processing, although these were noticeable only at ISO 200 and 400. Flash photography was well exposed with warm colours, and the macro mode focused down to just a couple of centimetres.

The Digital Ixus Wireless is a great little camera, but without the wireless features we wouldn't spend more than £200 on it. Nikon's WiFi-equipped Coolpix P2 (which we reviewed in Labs, Shopper January 2006) takes equally accomplished photos and costs just £170 including VAT, though its wireless features aren't as elegant. The Digital Ixus Wireless isn't worth £284, but if it falls to around £230 we'd be happy to recommend it.