I highly recommend Canon SD500 if you want a miniature, cool yet capable camera with 7.1-megapixel resolution that produces excellent photos with print sizes of up 13×19 inches. It is extremely fast, easy to use and utterly capable.

Canon’s little SD500 is a revolutionary imaging tool that pushes the boundaries of product development right to the cutting edge where the upper limits of current resolution technology meet the potential limits of miniaturization. With the introduction of the SD500 Canon has achieved one of the two symbolic holy grails of the digital imaging revolution (the other is an affordable high performance dSLR). Photography has always been about compromises so there will never be a perfect camera, but the new Canon Powershot SD500 comes tantalizingly close. It is (for now) in a class all by itself.

Canon has created yet another winner in its Digital ELPH series in the SD500. The SD500 makes an excellent family and travel camera, able to be used by photographers of every experience level and taking up no more space than a deck of cards. At a street price of under $500, the SD500 is not inexpensive, but it offers a compelling value to those who need its combination of small size, high resolution, terrific image quality and style.

Try as we might, we couldn’t find anything to dislike about this camera, other than the price.

With the PowerShot SD500 Digital ELPH, Canon has delivered an excellent ultra-compact, high resolution digital camera that’s one of the best out there. In case you didn’t notice, I like the PowerShot SD500. A lot. If you want a lot of pixels in a small camera, this is a great choice.

The Canon Ixus 700 is capable of producing some stunning results. The images produced by this camera contain tons of detail, natural colour and a good tonal range. What little evidence of chromatic aberration there is is very well controlled, and will only be visible in the very largest prints.

Canon wins very high marks with this tiny camera. Picture quality is excellent, the form factor is terrific but not museum quality. One of the ELPH’s few negatives is the proprietary lithium ion battery that really doesn’t have the juice to keep you shooting for a day.

So the SD500 is a great little camera that, maybe unfairly, I felt didn’t quite deliver on its promise. That said, we experienced none of the movie audio problems (a faint whine or hiss) mentioned by some owners (and in fact were very impressed by the movie mode), and in good light with plenty of contrast the results are often stunning.

The Canon PowerShot SD500 takes excellent pictures, but the lack of manual features makes it a pricey point-and-shoot camera.

As we’ve said time and again, having more megapixels doesn’t necessarily lead to better images. But we certainly can’t argue with this camera’s excellent image quality. The SD500 also performed very well on our speed and sharpness tests, and it’s got a fun My Color feature that will appeal to many types of shooters. Overall, the SD500 is strong enough to earn Editors’ Choice among ultracompact cameras.

We really enjoyed shooting with the Canon PowerShot SD500. It has an exterior design that combines form and function more elegantly than any point-and-shoot we’ve ever tested. A Digic II-powered image-processing system enables the SD500 to snap a limitless stream of 7-megapixel photos at a respectable clip, its start-up time is tops in its class, and it delivers decent photos when compared to its competition.

So should you be rushing out to buy the Ixus 700. This is the important question and we can’t help but feel the answer is NO.