The Canon Powershot SX270 HS is a slim, compact digital camera that you can carry in your pocket despite its large 20x optical zoom lens. It's got a great image stabiliser, important with such a large zoom, but how good are the photos it takes?
It's a Best Buy as it takes great photos, fantastic videos, is compact and lightweight yet packs a versatile 20x zoom lens - it should definitely be on your shortlist.
What is it?
An 12Mp superzoom compact camera with a large 20x zoom lens. Its compact, lightweight body still means you can carry it in your pocket.
What's it great for?
The large zoom gives you great flexibility over the type of shots you can take. It has decent wide-angle abilities, handy for group and landscape shots, or you can zoom in on distant subjects with the telephoto end of the range. It performed well throughout our tests.
What's the picture quality like?
It takes great photos under all conditions. It's excellent for outdoor snaps, whether shooting well-lit landscapes or in dimmer conditions under overcast skies. Indoor shots are great, too. Pictures taken without flash look natural and well-balanced, while in dimmer conditions the quality of flash photos is good - evenly illuminated and well exposed. Image quality holds up well in low-light conditions, with very little visual noise.
The image stabiliser works well. It's an important feature with a long zoom lens as taking hand-held shots at the telephoto end of the zoom range can blur images due to the slight movement of your hands.
It can take full-HD video at 1,920x1,080 resolution. Picture and sound quality are good.
What's it like to use?
It's smaller, lighter and thinner than many similar superzooms, which makes it easy to handle, although at full zoom the lens does stick out around 5cm from the body, making it look rather ungainly.
There's a useful handgrip on the front which, when used in conjunction with the excellent image stabilisation system, helps to keep the cameras steady and prevents blurring due to shaky hands.
This camera's 3-inch LCD screen is very good - it's easy to compose your shot and review your photos or videos - although, like all such screens, it can suffer from reflections in bright sunlight.
There are nine scene modes to play with, adjusting the exposure or adding creative effects to your pictures.
Is there anything I should watch for?
It's not the swiftest in burst mode - managing only around three shots per second. You could miss the shot you were hoping for when taking fast action pictures.
Is there anything else I should know?
It has shutter-speed and aperture-priority modes for the more experienced photographer to experiment with exposure control.
Should I buy it?
Yes - it's a Best Buy. Lightweight, compact and packing a large zoom, it takes great pictures and videos. The similar Canon Powershot SX280 HS with GPS and wi-fi is available for around £30 more, as an alternative.
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Pros: Large optical zoom, great photo and video quality
Cons: Burst mode a little sluggish
