The Canon PowerShot A480 is the cheapest model in Canon’s extensive range of compact cameras, but don’t let that put you off what is a well-featured and capable product for the money. The A480 is 25% smaller than its predecessor, the PowerShot A470, and offers a simplified button layout, bigger 10 megapixel sensor, a 3.3x optical zoom lens with a focal length of 37-122mm, DIGIC III image processing engine and a 2.5-inch LCD screen. The icing on the proverbial cake is a 1cm Macro mode, 15 different shooting modes, plus Face Detection, Motion Detection and Automatic Red-Eye Correction technologies. Available in silver, red, blue or black for we find out if the Canon PowerShot A480 is worth considering in these times of economic turmoil.
Ease of Use
The Canon Powershot A480 certainly won't win any design awards, with a slightly boxy design and "toy-camera" styling. While it won't impress your friends with its looks, the A480 is undeniably a well-made, quite compact digital camera, with an understated metallic blue, silver and black plastic body and excellent overall finish, impressive considering its budget price-tag. It's easily small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, yet still fits in a 3.3x optical zoom lens that offers a versatile focal length of 37-122mm. Weighing 140g without the battery or memory card fitted and measuring 3cms thick when turned off, the A480 is ideally suited to either a trouser pocket or small camera bag.
As with most Canon cameras that we've reviewed before, the Powershot A480 is one of the better models around in terms of build quality when compared to other competitive products. Every aspect has a quality feel with nothing feeling flimsy or ill-thought out. Even the tripod mount is almost centrally located, although it uses a plastic mount rather than metal. The battery compartment also houses the memory card slot, which means that the AA batteries sometimes fall out when changing the memory card as they don't have a catch to keep them in place. Still, this is a fairly minor criticism of a quality product. The A480 even has a small silver hand-grip with room for two fingers, something that more expensive A-series models have omitted, although it is made from a rather smooth and shiny material. Overall the Canon Powershot A480 is well constructed and designed with no obvious signs of corners being cut.
The Canon Powershot A480 has a simple design with few external controls, just 8 in total, which reflects the fact that this is a simple camera in functionality terms which is aimed firmly at the beginner market. Located on top of the A480 are the On/Off button and Shutter button, and on the bottom are the tripod mount and battery compartment, which also houses the SD memory card slot. On the rear of the A480 is the 2.5 inch LCD screen, with a number of controls to the right, including the zoom buttons. You can directly access the various focus and flash options by clicking left and right on the navigation pad, whilst up and down are respectively used to set the ISO speed and timer options. Located underneath the navigation pad are the Mode button, which allows you to select from Auto, Program, Scene and Movie modes, and the Menu button. The various buttons feel a little plasticky but are well-made and easy to operate.
The Function/Set button in the middle of the navigation pad opens a sub-menu, which allows you to set exposure compensation, white balance, colours, metering, continuous shooting, image quality and image size. This system is inherited from the more expensive A-series models and is a good compromise given the size of the camera's LCD screen and therefore the limited space for external controls. All 8 external controls are clearly labeled using industry-standard symbols and terminology. Overall the camera body feels very well-designed and not at all cluttered. The 2.5inch LCD screen has quite a wide viewing angle from left to right, but much less so from top to bottom, for example if you hold the camera above your head. It is visible in all but the brightest of sunlit conditions, although the low pixel count of 115,000 dots is disappointing by today's standards, resulting in a rather grainy display.
If you have never used a digital camera before, or you're upgrading from a more basic model, reading the comprehensive and fairly easy-to-follow manual before you start is a good idea. Unfortunately Canon have chosen to cut costs and only supply the full manual as a PDF on a CD, rather than in printed format (there's just a short printed guide to the camera's basic features). Not much use if you're taking pictures and need to find out what a particular option does. Battery life is a much better proposition at around 200 shots, outperforming the more expensive A1100 and A2100 cameras.
