Product Listing

Canon IXUS 200 IS - The IXUS Touch (Now with Video!)

By Seow Tein Hee - 3 Oct 2009

Performance

Touch and Go

To evaluate the performance of the IXUS 200 IS, we took a few things into consideration: speed, ease of usage, imaging quality and stamina. Speed is still important even for a point-and-shoot camera. What we're referring to is its start up time, the seconds taken to get a focus and image processing speed.

With the IXUS 200 IS, it takes less than 1.5 seconds to get the lens out and ready to shoot. On Auto mode, we registered slightly less than 1 second for the auto focus to lock onto a subject image. Lastly, the image processing took approximately more than a second to feature the taken shot for review. In short, this compact impressed us with its speed.

Like we've said, the IXUS 200 IS is generally simple in nature. This would place it as an easy to use compact camera with no frills. Nonetheless, the out-of-the-box experience isn't as simple as we might have hoped. For example, by now most touch screen devices have rather common gestures when it comes to touch navigation. But it took us a few head-scratching moments before we figured out some of the more intricate ones. This included the touch action gestures and accelerometer-based gestures.

Of course, the imaging quality is of great importance and we'll start off with a quick refresher on its specs which relates to its capabilities. The IXUS 200 IS is armed with a 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor capable of imaging at 12.1-megapixel resolution. It also has a decent aperture range from as low as F2.8 with a 24mm wide-angle lens capable of 5x optical zoom. So, with all those tech specs in place, how does the IXUS 200 IS perform when put to the test? Our verdict, in the pictures:

Capable of an ISO range from 80 to 1600, the IXUS 200 IS is going to find itself limited up to the ISO400 range. Going beyond that range will show a discernible amount of noise as seen in the image here. Click on the image for the full resolution shot.

Based on our test charts, the IXUS 200 IS has a horizontal LPH of around 1200 and vertical LPH of around 1100. Click on the image for the full resolution shot.

Macro shot. Taken on Auto mode, F2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO125. Click on the image for the full resolution shot. Wide-angle shot. Taken on Auto mode, F2.8, 1/500 sec, ISO80. Click on the image for the full resolution shot.

One of the things to look out for in a Macro shot is the shooting distance. The macro focus range is stated to be possible at 3cm, and it does come out well during close-up shots. Do note that one of the scenes known as Digital Macro is basically activating the camera's digital zoom, and will return sub-standard images. For wide-angle shots, we kept our eyes peeled for barrel distortion. As expected, we saw a discernible amount of barrel distortion in the images.

The IXUS 200 IS depends on a 1000mAh battery to power it through the day. In our tests, we drained the battery upon a full day of usage. In imaging terms, we had gotten up to 220 shots out of the IXUS 200 IS. Note that these shots are taken with a fair amount of flash being used for night shots. This doesn't exactly place the IXUS 200 IS as a long-lasting compact. But consider this: the device comes with a significant power drain in the form of a larger 3-inch screen on top of its slim profile. With that in mind, such mileage is acceptable.

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