Canon Digital Ixus 900 Ti review

Canon's Digital Ixus range of pocket cameras has long been a favourite of ours and has consistently impressed with their uncompromising build, useful features and high performance.

Sitting at the top of the range, the Ixus 900 Ti is Canon's first point-and-shoot model to feature a 10 megapixel sensor. It's larger and heavier than the Ixus 60 - even though it packs the same-sized screen, optical viewfinder and 3x zoom - although it's still what we would call pocket sized.

The durable stainless steel body of previous models has given way to an even tougher casing of pure titanium. New features include manual selection of sensitivity up to 1600 ISO, as well as a 3200 ISO preset shooting mode, nine-point autofocus with face recognition and XGA (1024 x 768pixel)/VGA 15/30fps movie clips up to 4GB with the new SDHC cards.

Like the company's most recent offerings, the 2.5in TFT has generous 170 viewing angles and, with 230,000 pixels, is more detailed than most. The panel is also easily viewed in strong lighting, but is still strongly reflective at times. It's then that you appreciate the small, reasonably clear optical viewfinder. Don't expect to keep the screen free of fingerprints, though: the new touch-sensitive control pad is slick, intuitive and swift, but the layout is a bit cramped.

Canon's excellent nine-point AiAF seems faster than ever, and the face recognition option works with up to nine people, simultaneously optimising exposure and focus for the principal subjects. In our tests, both on a single sitter and with a large stationary group, individual faces were promptly pinpointed with a tiny AF frame. Impressively, every AF box locked on to each face allowing slight adjustments in framing with ease. And it worked just as easily under incandescent lighting, albeit with slight white-balance errors. Using the 3200 ISO scene mode, the resultant images were pin-sharp, too.

It's not all-good news, though. There's no optical image stabiliser - practically de-rigueur on high-end compacts now - and no wide-angle zoom. Oddly, both of these features are included on the cheaper Ixus 850 IS. At 3200 ISO, resolution drops to just two megapixels and we found the new autofocus system was frequently stumped when attempting close-up portraits. What's more, although gains have been made in the suppression of noise, images were poorly detailed above 200 ISO.

We're also not convinced by the use of titanium. The raw finish shows fingerprints easily and although lighter in weight, any savings are minimal: the 900Ti is actually 15g heavier than the similar 7 megapixel Ixus 850 IS. Titanium is also notoriously difficult to work with. On our sample, the two casing panels showed poor alignment, and it was especially noticeable close to the shutter release and somewhat fiddly battery compartment.

Despite its shortcomings, though, the Canon Ixus 900 Ti is certainly a decent piece of kit, but if you can do without the 10 megapixel resolution, the £20 cheaper Ixus 850 IS may be the smarter choice.