The Canon PowerShot SX400 IS ($249.99) packs a long 30x zoom lens into a compact body, but its 16-megapixel CCD image sensor captures photos with quite a bit of noise and its no-frills design lacks modern features like Wi-Fi. If you absolutely must have this type of zoom range, we recommend stretching your budget and buying our Editors’ Choice Nikon Coolpix S9700 ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) . If you feel comfortable sacrificing some telephoto reach, the 18x Canon PowerShot SX600 HS ( at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is a better camera with some extra features built-in.

Design and Features
The SX400 IS measures 2.7 by 4.1 by 3.1 inches (HWD) and weighs 11 ounces. Its design is very plain, especially if you pick up the all-black version of the camera. Canon also offers it in red with black accents. It’s not the smallest 30x camera on the market; Canon’s own SX700 HS ($189.99 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) (2.6 by 4.4 by 1.4 inches, 9.5 ounces) is slimmer, but is priced $100 higher and doesn’t have as deep of a handgrip as the SX400.

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The lens is a 30x design that covers a 24-720mm (35mm equivalent) field of view. Its maximum aperture starts at f/3.4 at the wide end and narrows to f/5.8 when zoomed all the way in. It’s optically stabilized, which is a good thing as pushing the SX400’s ISO sensitivity introduces image noise.

The shutter release, zoom control, and power button are located on the top plate. Rear controls include a Movie button, a button to toggle fully Automatic shooting, image playback and menu controls, and a four-way directional pad that allows for direct adjustment of the macro focus range, exposure compensation, flash output, and self-timer.

Additional camera settings are adjusted via an on-screen overlay menu. Tapping the Func/Set button at the center of the directional pad launches the menu, which runs along the left side of the LCD. From there you’ll be able to control the metering pattern, color output, white balance, ISO, shooting mode, drive mode, aspect ratio, and image and video quality settings.

The rear display is a 3-inch panel with a 230k-dot resolution. That’s low, especially for a modern camera, and it makes all of your photos appear fuzzy when reviewing them. Canon’s SX510 HS ($369.00 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window) is an older model, but it also has a 30x zoom lens and sells for the same price; its 3-inch rear display is twice as sharp at 461k dots.

The SX400 doesn’t include Wi-Fi. If you want to be able to transfer images to your smartphone, you’ll have to add an Eyefi Mobi memory card. But, by the time you’ve spent the extra money on an Eyefi card, you might as well just buy a model with built-in Wi-Fi like the Canon SX700 HS or Nikon Coolpix S9700.

Performance and Conclusions

Performance and Conclusions
The SX400 starts and captures an in-focus image in a about 1.4 seconds, focuses in 0.2-second, and takes a photo every 1.4 seconds in continuous drive mode. It’s not as speedy as cameras that use Canon’s HS system, like the SX700 HS. It locks focus and fires in 0.1-second and can shoot continuously at 2.5fps, although it is a little slower to start up, requiring 1.6 seconds to do so.

See How We Test Digital Cameras

I used Imatest(Opens in a new window) to check the sharpness of the SX400’s lens. It managed 2,476 lines per picture height on a center-weighted sharpness test. That’s better than the 1,800 lines that we use to call an image sharp. Most Canon compacts exceed this mark; the SX600 scores 2,173 lines on the same test.

Imatest also checks photos for noise, which can add a grainy quality and detract from detail. The SX400 IS shows 1.9 percent noise at its lowest ISO 100 setting, which is higher than the 1.5 percent we use as a cut off for acceptability. A close look at images on a calibrated display shows that noise does detract from image quality, even at ISO 100. Fine lines in our standard studio test scene run together, and images have a grainy quality. It’s a little worse at ISO 200, and at ISO 400 the lines have started to really blur together. Image quality holds steady at ISO 800, but at the top ISO 1600 sensitivity the lines are a big blur. The Canon SX510 HS, which uses a CMOS image sensor, shows about 1.6 percent noise at ISO 400, and captures as much detail at ISO 800 as the SX400 does at ISO 400.

Video is recorded in QuickTime format at 720p30 quality. It’s not as sharp as 1080p, but the lens stabilization system does a good job steadying handheld footage. The internal microphone does a fine job at picking up voices, but noticeably cuts out higher pitches when zooming in order to obscure the sound of the lens moving in and out. There’s no HDMI output port, just a mini USB port. The camera supports SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards, and includes a dedicated external battery charger.

The Canon PowerShot SX400 IS packs a long 30x zoom lens in a small body. It doesn’t include a lot of extra features, and its CCD image sensor limits HD video capture to 720p and is a step behind more modern CMOS sensors in high ISO performance. Canon’s own SX510 HS does a better job in lower light, includes built-in Wi-Fi, and is priced the same, so we recommend that strongly as an alternative as long as it’s still available. And there are other good superzooms in this price range with slimmer form factors, including the Canon PowerShot SX600 HS, although it only has an 18x lens. Our Editors’ Choice in this category, the Nikon Coolpix S9700, costs $100 more, but has a 30x lens and can slide into your pocket. If you prefer to stick with Canon, the SX700 HS is similar in performance and features to the S9700, and is also recommended as an alternative to the SX400 IS.