With the Powershot SD600, Canon adds yet another good ultra-compact digital camera to its list of accomplishments. The SD600 is easy to use, operates rapidly and produces fairly good images. The sensor displays low image noise at low ISO sensitivities to provide clean prints when sufficient light is available. Its major shortcoming is that the automatic white-balance is too warm and does not portrait colors accurately, both indoors and outdoors. This can be corrected using preset or custom white-balance but is nevertheless an important failure for a point-and-shoot digital camera. Another worst-than-average problem is this cameras very short battery-life. The remaining weaknesses are nothing to worry about and are quite normal for ultra-compact cameras.

For people who frequently use custom white-balance, or at least preset white-balance, this camera is worth considering. Otherwise, the older Canon Powershot SD550 produces somewhat better images using automatic white-balance at the expense of less LCD resolution and an ISO 400 limit. At the noise levels of the SD600, the lower ISO limit is not really a problem. Other better ultra-compact digital cameras include the Fuji Finepix F30 and the Fuji Finepix F10, both of which show superior image-quality, image noise and battery-life.