Review: Canon Powershot A430 digital camera

Available with a choice of four different-coloured faceplates, a compact from the market-leader for £90 seems like excellent value.

The trade-off is that resolution is capped at the 4-megapixel mark – and we wouldn’t advise settling for anything lower than this.

As well, light sensitivity peaks at ISO400 and the build of the body is both thick and plasticky. There’s no rechargeable battery, either.

On the plus side, a 16MB MMC card is thrown in. There’s also a better-than-average 4x optical zoom to get closer to the action. While the 1.8in review screen is small by current standards, there’s an optical viewfinder immediately above, should it be needed.

The A430 also has an intelligent autofocus system – a feature usually found only in cameras higher up the price scale – plus a 1cm super-macro mode for extreme close-ups, both of which suggest a degree of versatility that belies its budget status. There are 15 preset scene modes to match different weather conditions or subjects.

The camera powers up in a couple of seconds and there’s no delay between pressing the shutter and an image being captured. Unusually, the slightly noisy zoom is controlled via the four-way toggle switch centrally located on the camera’s back, while attendant controls, such as the bottletop-style mode dial, give access to video capture, scene modes and playback.

Video clips can be downgraded for sending via email, while the My Colours range of photo effects allows for some in-camera tomfoolery. Captured images are sharp and colourful, operational controls are chunky and menus simplistic, making for a fuss-free performance.

This article is part of a group test of digital cameras costing £100 or less.
See also:
Acer CE-6430
Benq DC C540
Fujifilm Finepix A400
Olympus FE-170
Pentax Optimo M10

A table of features can be read via our pdf download above.