The Ixus 90 IS takes up its positions in the middle of Canon’s Ixus range. It lacks the wide angle and longer zoom of its superiors, yet offers this year’s must-haves; image stabilisation, a high pixel count (10MP), face recognition, and a reasonable price.

Canon hasn't changed its menu system significantly for a number of years now, choosing to refine basic functions rather than add more advanced features. You can easily find a more advanced compact for similar money, but you'll struggle to find anything as well designed externally.

The tried-and-tested Ixus form has seen only minor changes, and this is no bad thing; the offset location of the lens remains, and the focus assist light allows for a solid single-handed grip without fingers intruding into the shot.

Beautiful design

One casualty of this year’s revision is the optical viewfinder, though it’s far less important than it used to be thanks to the improved PureColor LCD, remaining viewable in even relatively bright sunlight.

Canon has reworked the rear controls significantly, though what is gained in aesthetics is lost in usability. Much of the navigation now takes place via a textured click wheel, used to change shooting modes, scroll through photos and navigate the menu.

Those used to Apple’s click wheel may have trouble here – operation of the Ixus has more in common with a rotary dial telephone than an iPod, requiring a firm revolving movement to create enough traction. Even then, the interface struggles to keep up if you move too fast, and pressing too hard will operate the buttons underneath. Similarly, the flush mounted buttons – fashioned from the same piece of metal as the outer shell – are far less yielding than you’d expect, and provide little tactile feedback.

Great image quality

Despite some poor external design decisions, the Ixus 90’s image quality is a marked improvement over previous incarnations. This is partially due to the megapixel bump, but we also noticed significant improvements in colour reproduction, with the previously-volatile automatic white balance proving accurate in every shot we took.