The latest G-series Canon features a wealth of controls and features rarely found among compact cameras. The G10 has a tough build to its highly manual design using numerous buttons and dials. Indeed, to many the appeal of the G10 is its design and control accessibility. At that, the G10 does fairly well except for an awkward and tiny shutter-button and zoom controller. The notable external improvements over its predecessor are a 5X wide-angle lens, a 460K pixels 3" LCD and a proper hand-grip.

 

In terms of image quality and performance, the Canon G10 is an almost-there digital camera. At the lowest ISO settings (80 and 100), the G10 resolves details well and shows little image noise. Color and focus accuracy are also quite good, although overexposure is sometimes a problem. Noise rises fast at each ISO, making ISO 400 border on the useless and ISO 800 and 1600 serving no purpose other than satisfying marketing. Overall, speed is decent but certainly not class-leading.

 

Unfortunately, the uniqueness of the G10's feature set among digital cameras makes it nearly competition-free other than the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. The LX3 is a much smaller 10 megapixels camera with an ultra-wide 24-60mm F2-2.8 lens. Not only does it perform better at high-ISO than the G10, but it call also always shoot the same situation at 1 full-stop of ISO less due to a wider maximum lens aperture. The Canon Powershot A720 IS still remains an excellent competitor for those who are not after a wide-angle lens. This much cheaper option has a longer 6X optical zoom lens and a reasonably complete but certainly less advanced feature set.