By Jason Saundalkar
Canon's products have traditionally carried a price premium and the Canon Digital Ixus 200 IS is no exception. Like its predecessors however, the Ixus 200 justifies its cost.
Like Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-TX1 the Ixus 200 features a touchscreen LCD. However, while the Sony forces you to interact with it expressly via this interface, the Canon also has a number of buttons and dials, so you can interact with it in a more traditional way.
Comparing the two we found the Ixus far easier to use because both buttons and touchscreen worked brilliantly; while the Sony annoyed us from time-to-time, the Canon's screen proved responsive and thanks to its interface, felt quite natural to use. The Digital Ixus 200 is designed for photographers that value convenience above control and thus you won't find manual control options with regard to shutter speed and aperture. That said, the camera features a number of automated shoot modes and offers face detection, so when it came to testing, the Canon blew us away.
Using the camera's ‘auto' mode the Ixus returned fantastic photographs that were vibrant, accurate and packed with detail. Switching the camera to one of its pre-programmed shoot modes - such as ‘Indoor' - the Ixus returned slightly better shots of the same subject. The Canon's low-light images were also impressive though like the other cameras here, noise appeared at ISO settings of 1600 and 3200.