Canon PowerShot A460

Canon's new PowerShot A460 is really an updated version of last year's A430, which I found to be a very good cheap camera. This year's model doesn't stray too far from the original and should please the average picture-taker. More discerning shooters, however, will find it lacking in a few key areas.

The A460's lens is pretty standard—a 4X optical zoom with a 5.4mm-to-21.6mm range (which is equivalent to a 35mm lens with a 38mm-152mm zoom) and corresponding maximum f-stops of f/2.8 to f/5.8. Canon did make a few improvements, though. The camera now boasts a 5-megapixel sensor instead of a 4MP one. It's also got a 2-inch LCD, slightly larger than the 1.8-inch one on the A430. And, most important, the camera's list price is $30 cheaper, at $149.99.

Otherwise, when it all is said and done, the A460 is nearly identical to the older A430 model. In fact, it's so much of a doppelgänger that I gave this PowerShot the same 3.5-star rating as its predecessor. One attribute on which the A460 measured up better than last year's model was its burst mode: It may not be super-fast, but it is very steady. Shots in this mode with flash engaged, however, were slow. I also like that Canon decided to keep the glass eyepiece and not do away with it in favor of the LCD screen, as has been done on other point-and shoots. This feature comes in handy in bright light.

As I noted earlier, the video files, saved as AVI motion JPEG files, can be captured to the capacity of the card. But the camera supports only 10 frames per second, even for its "high-quality" VGA clips, which results in pretty jerky video. Also, the overall video quality could use some improvement.

In my still-life tests, the simulated-daylight test picture had just a bit of noise, and the flash shots had a lot more noncolored noise throughout. Even so, color was very vibrant and accurate. There was some fringing, but it wasn't too noticeable. Overall, however, the contrast was a little too strong, with some details being swallowed up by shadows. Flash shots were decent enough for a compact digital camera, but the images were a tad underexposed for my tastes.

The camera did very well on my resolution test, averaging 1,500 lines, which is at the top of the range for a 5MP camera. The A460's 3.3-second bootup time was acceptable, but not super-quick. I found very little noticeable shutter lag. With no pincushion distortion and just a bit of barrel distortion at the wide-angle end of the zoom, the A460's lens tested acceptably for an inexpensive point-and-shoot.

The camera's 7.2-second recycle time was annoyingly slow. That's a long time to wait between shots.

Despite the slow recycle time and weak video performance, the $150 Canon PowerShot A460 is still a good buy for basic picture-taking.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the Canon PowerShot A460's test scores.

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