The Canon PowerShot SX600 ($249.99) is a slim camera that somehow manages to squeeze an 18x zoom lens into its svelte body. The 16-megapixel camera features Canon's unique Creative Shot mode, which adds color filters and unique crops to your images, and it's got Wi-Fi so you can share images as soon as you capture them. It's not quite an Editors' Choice winner; its images are a bit too noisy for it to earn that recommendation. Our current favorite compact zoom is the Nikon Coolpix S9700($249.95 at Adorama), which is more expensive, but has a longer 30x lens and does better in low light.

Design and Features
At 2.4 by 4.1 by 1 inch (HWD) and 6.6 ounces, the SX600($165.00 at Amazon) is one of the smaller and lighter long zoom cameras out there. The Samsung WB350F($134.96 at Amazon) (2.5 by 4.5 by 1 inch, 7.6 ounces) comes close, but it's just a little bit larger and heavier. Canon offers the camera in white, black, or red; regardless of color, the body has rounded edges and a modest, but comfortable, bump on the faceplate that serves as a modest handgrip. The 18x lens covers a 25-450mm f/3.8-6.9 (35mm equivalent) field of view, which is a bit less ambitious than the 21x (23-483mm f/2.8-5.9) range offered by the WB350F.

The top plate houses a pop-up flash (raised via a mechanical release), the power button, the shutter release, and the zoom rocker. There's no mode dial like you'll find on the Canon PowerShot SX700 HS($94.95 at Amazon); instead, there's a toggle switch on the rear thumb rest that allows you to change between Creative Shot, Hybrid Auto, or Program shooting. There are no full manual modes; the best you can do is set a specific Scene mode (they include Snow, Fireworks, Portrait, and others) in the Program mode to match what you're shooting.

Rear controls include buttons to access the menu, play images, record movies, and connect to a device via Wi-Fi. There's a four-way directional pad with exposure compensation, flash, macro focus, and information display controls, and a center Func./Set button. Tapping it while shooting in Program mode launches an overlay menu that lets you adjust the metering pattern, white balance, ISO, self-timer, drive mode, and image quality settings. The overlay menu is also available in Creative Shot and Hybrid Auto, but it only allows you to set the self-timer and adjust the video output quality in those modes.

Canon has put its Creative Shot mode, first seen in the PowerShot N($119.99 at Amazon), in its latest batch of PowerShots, the SX600 included. It captures a series of images with different color filters and crops; the final includes your original image and five filtered shots. Canon has tweaked Creative Shot to the point where I found myself actually preferring some of the cropped and filtered images to what I had originally framed. It does take some authorship out of the hands of the photographer, but it's worth playing around with. The biggest drawback is the lack of control; there's no way to set the focusing range to macro when in Creative Shot or to set the shutter speed, for example.

The 3-inch rear LCD features a 460k-dot resolution. It's perfectly adequate, and has a very wide viewing angle, but it's not quite as sharp or as punchy in terms of color as the 921k-dot OLED display that Nikon uses for the S9700. It also doesn't support touch input; I did find myself missing the tap-to-focus function that the Samsung WB350F's touch screen provides.

Canon's built-in Wi-Fi is pretty functional. It goes beyond basic file transfer from camera to handheld device by adding remote shooting control and a location logger to the Canon CameraWindow app for iOS and Android. You can use the app to take remote control of the camera, but control is limited: It's possible to adjust the zoom, set the self-timer, enable or disable the flash, and fire the shutter, but that's it. If you want to add location data to photos, you'll need to turn on the GPS logger before you start shooting and confirm that your phone and camera clocks are in sync.

You can also post images and video to Web sites, but you'll have to configure a few things first. The SX600 uses the Canon Image Gateway service to push images to Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, and others, and the first step is setting up an account there. Once that's done you'll need to pair the camera with the service (it takes a couple of minutes) and set up your social accounts. It's not as elegant an implementation as you'll find on Samsung models like the WB350F—it posts to social sites directly, without requiring a separate account—but if you have multiple Canon cameras, this approach will save you from entering passwords and user accounts in multiple places.

Performance and Conclusions

Performance and Conclusions
The SX600 starts and shoots in about 1.6 seconds, and locks focus in 0.1-second. Continuous shooting is possible at 1.6fps, which is on the slow side of things. The next model up in Canon's lineup, the SX700, can fire off photos at 2.5fps, and matches the SX600 in startup and focus speed.

I used Imatest to check the sharpness that the SX600 was able to muster when put through our standard center-weighted test. A score of 1,800 lines per picture height is required for an image to be deemed acceptably sharp, and the SX600 betters that with a 2,173-line score. It does a bit better than the Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS40( at Amazon) (1,955 lines), but it doesn't have the EVF or Raw shooting capability offered by that camera.

Imatest also checks photos for noise, which is an area in which the SX600 falls a bit short. If an image has too much noise it can appear grainy, and detail can suffer—all compact cameras apply some sort of noise reduction to control this, but some are more aggressive than others, trading detail for a less grainy look. To its credit, the SX600 appears to take a less aggressive approach to noise control; it only manages to keep it under 1.5 percent at its base ISO 100 sensitivity, but detail does not suffer for it there. Noise jumps to 1.7 percent at ISO 200, and 1.9 percent at ISO 400 and 800, before increasing to 2.1 percent at ISO 1600 and 2.7 percent at ISO 3200. A close look at images from our ISO test sequence on a calibrated NEC MultiSync PA271W( at Amazon) display shows that, despite being on the noisy side, image detail holds up through ISO 400. There's some smudging at ISO 800, and by ISO 1600 details are gone. The Nikon Coolpix S9700 does a better job; it keeps noise under control through ISO 800, but also retains a good amount of detail at that setting.

Video tops out at 1080p30 quality in MP4 format. The footage is detailed, but it is on the grainy side, even under bright studio lighting. Even at 30 frames per second it's smooth, and the camera is quick to adjust focus as the scene changes. The rolling shutter effect only shows up during very quick pans when zoomed in a bit. The sound of the lens zooming in and out when recording footage is audible, but it's not overly distracting. You can review your footage on an HDTV thanks to a micro HDMI output port, and there's also a mini USB port to connect to a computer. Canon includes a wall charger for the battery, so if you opt to buy a second one for extended shooting you'll be able to charge it without sacrificing use of the camera. Standard SD, SDHC, and SDXC memory cards are supported.

The Canon PowerShot SX600 HS isn't the best pocket superzoom on the market, but given its $250 asking price and feature set it's by no means a bad camera. The 18x zoom lens covers a lot of ground, and the Creative Shot mode is a feature unique to Canon cameras that can set your photos apart from the crowd. Its image (and video) are on the noisy side, but it holds its own in terms of detail at moderate ISOs. If you can afford it, you'll be better served with our Editors' Choice compact superzoom, the Nikon Coolpix S9700—it's $100 more, but delivers a 30x zoom lens, integrated GPS, and cleaner images for that price, but its Wi-Fi isn't as robust as the Canon. Canon also has a $350 long zoom compact, the SX700, that shares a lot of features in common with the SX600, but betters it in terms of image quality and zoom range. And if you're working with more of a budget, and willing to sacrifice some zoom to get a lower cost camera, don't count out the 10x Canon PowerShot Elph 330 HS($60.00 at Amazon)—it's our favorite inexpensive compact camera.

Best Camera Picks

• The Best DSLR and Mirrorless Cameras for 2020
• The Best Bridge Cameras for 2020
• The Best Point-and-Shoot Cameras for 2020
• The Best Instant Cameras for 2020
• More Camera Reviews
• More from Canon

Camera Product Comparisons

• Nikon D7100 vs. Nikon D7200
• Nikon D500 vs. Nikon D750
• Sony Alpha 5100 vs. Sony Alpha 6000
• Canon EOS 6D vs. Canon EOS 5D Mark III
• Sony Alpha 6000 vs. Sony Alpha 6300

Further Reading

• Canon vs. Nikon vs. Sony: Choosing the Right Camera System
• Raspberry Pi's $50 'High Quality Camera' Supports Interchangeable Lenses
• How to Use Your Canon DSLR as a Webcam
• Canon Details Upcoming EOS R5 Mirrorless Camera
• Peak Design to Donate First Round of Travel Tripod Profits to Charity