Canon IXUS 80 IS

+ Brilliant build quality; lovely to look at and use
- On paper the specs aren’t absolutely cutting-edge

It’s one of the smallest around, and the shape is close to perfect: not too short, not too wide. The build quality is the best around with a lovely solid feel to the metal chassis. Our review model came in a funky champagne-pink sort of colour too, and while we’re not normally swayed by something as trivial as a paint job, it looked bleedin’ lovely.

Features-wise, even though it’s in the middle of Canon’s bewilderingly vast range of IXUS compacts (around a dozen models at the last count), you’ll want for little in the way of features.

Tricksy bits

For high-tech trickery, look no further than the optical image stabilisation to let you take shots in low light without camera shake. And the face-tracking system can identify the people in a shot, putting a little box around them in the display and making sure their faces are properly in focus and correctly exposed.

It has its shortcoming though. The 2.5in screen is relatively small compared to the 3in of the likes of Nikon’s S600 and the massive 3.5in of the Sony T300. And it doesn’t have the real wide-angle zoom of some others, so sometimes you might feel like you can’t fit everything you want in a shot. On top of that, if you’re a megapixels weeny, the IXUS 80 IS produces only 8.0 million pixels to most of the competitions’ 10. Take it from us though that the practical difference in image quality between 8 and 10 megapixels is zero. It’s pure marketing.

The amazing part

The thing we really like about the IXUS is that – shock! horror! – it’s just great at taking pictures. It starts up in a trice: from your finger hitting the on button, the lens extends and the camera’s ready to take a picture in half a second.

Image quality is great, on-screen menus are responsive and simple to use, and there are enough options for flexibility without overwhelming you with pointless settings. Added to that the lovely build quality, decent price and the way it fits in your hand and the IXUS 80 IS is our favourite digital compact.

They say: A compact, curved design in four attractive colour variations
We say: The first compact that doesn’t look too girly in different colours