The Canon Powershot SD500 may be thicker than most other ultra-compact cameras but the added weight is well worth it. This digital camera takes much better pictures than other ultra-compact cameras, except for the Fuji Finepix F10. Indeed the SD500 was the first ultra-compact camera awarded an excellent rating at neocamera. This camera is reasonably well built and is very easy to carry.

The weak points of the Canon SD500 camera are extremely common to cameras of this size but they are well under control. Image noise is present but fine-grained which makes it harder to notice. Corner softness and chromatic aberrations are present but not overwhelming. The only worse-than-average weakness of the SD500 is its battery life which is exceeded by far by the Fuji F10, the Casio Z750 and Casio Z55.

The SD500 is also one of the rare ultra-compact cameras that can be used for low light photography, thanks to its slow shutter mode which allows the user to select a shutter speed between 1 and 15 seconds. This is important because in-camera metering does not usually work well at low light levels. Additionally, the LCD brightens in low-light which makes it possible to see what you are shooting at even when it is dark.