Canon PowerShot A3400 IS First Impressions Review

Lens & Sensor

The lens and sensor combination is the same as the rest of this year's A-series lineup, including the A810 and A2300 but excluding the 8x-zooming A4000 IS.

It's built around a 16-megapixel, 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor, which is typical for a point and shoot (and probably the same as last year's A3300 IS). The lens is a 5x-zoom, 28mm-wide unit. It also uses the Digic 4 image processor, used in a number of high-end Canon compacts until they upgraded to a newer version recently.

LCD

The 3-inch, 230,000-pixel LCD is one of the A3400's key features. All of the cheaper models use 2.7-inch screens. It's the same display used in last year's A3300 IS as well as the new A4000 IS. It's pretty big for a budget-friendly model.

Flash

The built-in flash is only powerful enough to light up a small room and not much else. It's rated for just 10 feet of effectiveness at the wide angle, and only 6.6 feet at the telephoto setting. Canon also notes that the flash can take around 10 seconds to recharge between shots, which is pretty sluggish. A Slow Synchro mode is available.

Jacks, Ports & Plugs

A single port pulls double-duty as a USB and A/V hookup.

Battery

The A3400 runs on a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. It seems to be the same battery used in the A2300 and A2400 IS, but since it's powering a larger screen on the A3400, it's rated for a relatively meager 180 shots per charge.

Memory

No surprises here, the A3400 records to SD/SDHC/SDXC media cards.