Canon PowerShot SD960 IS

The Canon PowerShot SD960 IS Digital ELPH is a soft, curvy little point-and-shoot that's likely to appeal to camera users with an eye toward ease-of-use and uncluttered design. There aren't a lot of manual controls and the camera does seem stripped down to the bare essentials, but the decent lens and 12.1-megapixel stills promise better performance than some puny toy camera. Of course, we'll have to wait until the SD960 hits our labs before we make any claims about actual performance, but the camera is certainly intriguing on paper.

What we did see in our hands-on time with the SD960 is a small and simple camera crammed full of beginner-friendly features like focus assist tools, face detection, and scenes modes. It's not as small as its SD780 cousin, but the increase in size gets you a larger LCD and a slightly more robust lens. And that slick scroll wheel is a nice upgrade from the unwieldy control pad we see elsewhere in the PowerShot lineup. If the 720p video and still performance can meet expectations in our lab, the SD960 will be an impressive point-and-shoot for the 2009 season.

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