Canon Ixus 140 review

This year we’ve seen a flurry of ultra-compact cameras with 10x zoom lenses and Wi-Fi. The Canon Ixus 255 HS is our favourite – it also happens to offer the best image quality we’ve ever seen from an ultra-compact camera. It costs around £200, but if that’s beyond your budget, the Ixus 140 might be a better fit.

Its 8x zoom is a little smaller, with slightly less extension at both the wide-angle and telephoto ends of the zoom range. Battery life is down, too. 190 shots is worryingly low, especially as use of the Wi-Fi functions will take an added toll on the battery.

It looks just as smart with its slim, curvy body and 3in screen. It was only when we picked it up that we realised it’s made from plastic rather than its pricier sibling’s metal shell. On the upside, it’s a few grams lighter and 2mm slimmer.

Their controls and menus are identical, including the same set of Wi-Fi functions. It offers straightforward browsing and transfers in the accompanying iOS and Android apps, and can also transfer to desktop PCs across a home network. There’s no option to operate the camera remotely from a smartphone app, though – a common feature among other Wi-Fi cameras.

Videos are limited to 720p resolution, and the same 10-minute clip length applies. There are lots of cameras at this price that can record 1080p for 20 minutes or more. It’s a shame because, in most other respects, the video mode worked well in our tests. The focus, exposure and white balance reacted smoothly to changing lighting and moving subjects, and colour reproduction was excellent.

The Ixus 140 uses Canon’s older Digic 4 processor rather than the Ixus 255 HS’s newer Digic 5 chip. This took its toll on performance, with 2.5 seconds between shots. It’s not a disastrous result but it’ll be frustrating for people who like to capture a quick string of shots to make sure they get one without camera shake or people blinking. Continuous mode ran at 0.7fps, which equates to a shot every 1.4 seconds. The Sony WX200 is faster than this in its normal shooting mode, and its continuous mode runs at 10fps.

Photos are higher resolution than the Ixus 255 HS’s, up from 12 to 16 megapixels. This might seem odd, but time and again we’ve seen superior photos from 12-megapixel compact cameras than from 16-megapixel ones, as any extra detail is outweighed by increased noise. That was true here, although in brightly lit shots there wasn’t much to choose between them. Direct comparisons revealed that the Ixus 255 HS’s lens was sharper towards the edges of frames. The Ixus 140’s focus also diminished a little as we zoomed in. It exhibited a little blotchy noise in the darker parts of frames, particularly on smooth areas of colour such as walls. However, these problems were rarely noticeable in the vast majority of our test shots. Most outdoor photos stood up well to scrutiny, and they all looked superb at typical viewing sizes.

There’s nothing to fault here: details are sharp, with plenty of definition in the grass. The highlights on the swans are handled well too

**.The same goes for these dense textures. There’s a little noise in the shadows but you’d have to go looking for it

Focus isn’t as crisp in this telephoto shot, but it’s still a solid result

The difference between the two cameras’ image quality was much more pronounced in low-light scenes. High-contrast details were reasonably sharp but subtler textures were replaced by haze and a light graininess. Noise and hazy details were also visible at the long end of the zoom, even in bright conditions, where the camera sensibly raised the ISO and shutter speeds to avoid camera shake. The noise reduction isn’t the ugliest we’ve seen, though, and it became largely irrelevant once photos were resized to fit a computer screen.

This indoor shot with ambient sunlight is hard to criticise considering it came from a £160 camera

Household artificial light is a tougher challenge, but image quality is still good enough for sharing online at modest resolutions. The slow 1/13s shutter speed would be a problem for moving subjects, though

Taken on its own terms, the Ixus 140 is a modest success. Image quality is comfortably up to the demands of casual snapping, the design is straightforward and elegant and the Wi-Fi features are genuinely useful. However, it really is worth finding those extra funds for the Ixus 255 HS, which has faster performance, a slightly bigger zoom range, longer battery life and vastly superior photo and video quality.