Powershot with a plastic Cannon (Canon Powershot A720 IS)

Member Name: kamal

Product:	Canon Powershot A720 IS
Date:	21/01/09 (19 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent image quality, Image Stabilization, Creative controls, large zoom

Disadvantages: Ugly and chunky plastic box

I borrowed this camera from a friend as my Canon A95 went for repair. As this camera came 2-3 years after A95, I was expecting lot of progress made in terms of features etc. But looks like Canon is delibarately moving away from compact camera market where it ruled with powershot series.

The camera is bulky without any reason. It doesn't feel very solid and gives flimsy plastic box feeling. It is one of those ugly looking camera in the market. I miss that metal brush finishing and solid feeling of A95 along with the swivel screen.

But things are not all that bad. It is still a very descent camera and takes better quality pictures than most of the compacts around. The image quality is great and colors are very natural, as you expect from Canon. The image stabilization works very well and always gives you sharp image. There are usual manual controls and lots of scene mode (around 19 modes I think) found in other Powershots, which makes them very good compact cameras. The 6x zoom is excellent and auto focus is very quick even using full zoom. The movie mode is good but not great at 640x480 30fps.

With such advance Powershot, I would expect following features:
- HD Movie Mode
- Better look and solid feel and more compact like Lumix TZ5
- Better screen resolution and swivel LCD

But this is very good package overall and good value for money. Excellent camera if you don't mind its size and looks.

Summary: Good value for money

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