Canon Digital IXUS 700 review

Performance
Looking at the Canon Digital IXUS 700's performance scores, it's clear that the company's Digic II processor has a lot to offer, though there's also room for improvement. The IXUS 700 is our new champion of point-and-shoot-camera start-up time, going from power-on to first shot in a mere 1.4 seconds, about 0.3 seconds better than the previous record. The IXUS 700 also posted some decent scores in the shutter-lag department, logging a delay of 0.6 seconds under optimal light and 0.8 seconds under dim conditions.

With the flash disabled, shot-to-shot times averaged 1.5 seconds, placing it in the top quarter of compact snapshot cameras; enabling the flash slowed things down significantly, upping the time to a more middling 3.8 seconds. The camera's limitless burst mode captured full-resolution shots at a reasonable pace of 1.7fps, while dropping the resolution and upping the compression marginally improved that score to 1.8fps.

The IXUS 700's proprietary lithium-ion battery performed extremely well, giving the camera enough power to get through nearly 1,300 shots before it sputtered and died. There are six stops along the camera's 3x optical-zoom range; since there's no onscreen indicator of where you are along the continuum, you'll either have to guess or zoom all the way out to orient yourself. Zooming action is a bit noisy, but unless you're engaging in some serious covert ops, the sound won't impede the camera's overall functionality.

Shooting speed in seconds
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (typical)

Time to first shot

Canon Digital IXUS 700

1.5

0.6

1.4

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P150

1.9

0.6

3.0

Canon PowerShot S70

2.0

0.8

3.1

Olympus C-7000

2.3

0.5

2.2

Continuous-shooting speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Typical continuous-shooting speed (frames per second)

Canon Digital IXUS 700

1.7

Olympus C-7000

1.5

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P150

1.4

Canon PowerShot S70

1.0

Battery life
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Number of shots

Canon Digital IXUS 700 (600mAh LiIon)

1,300

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-P150 (4.4Wh LiIon)

958

Olympus C-7000 (1,230mAh LiIon)

820

Canon PowerShot S70 (720mAh LiIon)

262

Image quality
Overall, the IXUS 700 delivered sharp, almost too-saturated images, with a slightly cool white balance. Metering and exposure were top-notch, even in difficult backlit and sidelit scenes. Though it tended to blow out highlights more than we'd like, we saw excellent dynamic range in the midtones and shadows. Because blown-out highlights tend to create high-contrast edges, however, we also saw more frequent purple fringing there and on the sides of the scene, where lens focus falls off. Shots taken at ISO 50 and ISO 100 displayed relatively low noise; as expected, noise did become more apparent at settings of ISO 200 and ISO 400.

Edited by Lori Grunin
Additional editing by Nick Hide