Small ; good lens specs ; excellent photo color, exposure

Wide-screen LCD ; odd controls or lack thereof ; purple fringing in photos

While its design is less than thrilling, the Canon PowerShot SD960 IS still has great photo quality to fall back on.

Useful 27mm wide-angle zoom ; excellent image stabilization ; full selection of manual and automatic exposure controls ; 720p movie capture with operational zoom ; relatively fast

Prone to soft, noisy photos ; no hotshoe

Other cameras may deliver higher resolution and longer optical zooms, but the Panasonic FZ28 proves that the "more is better" presumption isn't always valid.

Terrific design, interface, and controls ; wide-angle, 5x zoom lens ; excellent price-to-feature ratio

No optical zoom while recording video ; soft photos

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W290 is an excellent, well-balanced compact camera.

Very good photo, video quality ; great high-res LCD

No optical zoom in Movie mode ; slow, narrow lens ; no shutter speed, aperture controls

It might take a good picture, but the Canon PowerShot SD970 IS' feature-to-price ratio is disappointing.

Very small ; simple operation ; very good photo and HD movie quality ; HDMI out

No optical zoom in Movie mode ; generally soft photos ; mixed performance

If you need an ultracompact camera for your pocket or purse, strongly consider the Canon PowerShot SD780 IS.

Viewfinder; simple operation; inexpensive

Limited shooting controls; mixed performance

The entry-level Canon PowerShot A1000 IS is low-cost without being lousy.

Fast ; tiltable LCD ; Hand-held Twilight mode produces better-than-average photos in low light ; zooms during movie capture

Small EVF ; no raw support ; HDMI output requires dongle ; no standard continuous-shooting mode

Tradeoffs abound in Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 megazoom: though it's fast and has some really novel, useful features, it just doesn't deliver the photo quality expected for its class.

Compact body with wide-angle lens with 12x zoom; manual controls; very good photo and video quality for its class

Mixed performance; no optical zoom in Movie mode

More than just a point-and-shoot pocket megazoom, the Canon SX200 IS improves upon its forerunner, but not by much.

Relatively fast ; good HD video ; raw file support

Big ; quirky interface ; some image artifacts

A top megazoom option, the Canon PowerShot SX1 IS offers a 20x zoom lens and HD video, which you can't get in a similarly priced dSLR, and delivers more features and slightly better performance and photo quality than the cheaper SX10 IS.

Excellent photo quality for the money ; 6x zoom ; simple operation

Limited controls ; slow performance

The Canon PowerShot A2000 IS is lean on features beyond its stabilized 6x zoom lens, but it takes great photos and is easy to use.