The IXUS II is the first camera from Canon to support Secure Digital storage cards, instead of Compact Flash, which helps it achieve a small overall size. The 2x optical zoom can go to 6.4x if you add in digital zoom and 3.2 megapixels, which is good enough for A4 prints.

Key functions are easy to access and there are a whole range of buttons and selectors on the casing. Providing you're right-handed there is still space for comfortable one-handed use without your thumb obscuring anything vital. The metal casing is both good-looking and robust: after drop-testing an IXUS 400, whose casing is made of the same material, onto hard surfaces a few times it is barely scratched.

Canon is proud of its DiGic processor, which is designed to render images quickly an accurately. During testing, image quality was certainly perfectly acceptable and features such as the ability to manually adjust shutter speed proved useful. If you are a fan of digital movies this camera can shoot those too, although you won't get much on an SD card and Canon's Stitch Assist mode is on hand to help with panoramic shots. Desktop software PhotoStitch completes the process of panorama production and there is other desktop software for manipulating images.

Canon's IXUS range always impresses. Customisable start-up images and sound effects might not be your cup of tea, but some will like this feature and if you are a fan of SD cards and want a very small, light, and capable camera, this could be the ideal choice. --Sandra Vogel