The Canon PowerShot Elph 340 HS ($199.99) is a pocket camera that's got a striking list of specifications, including a 12x (25-300mm) zoom lens, a 16-megapixel image sensor, and built-in Wi-Fi. It's small enough to slide into a shirt pocket or earn a permanent spot in your purse, and its focus is quite quick. But the Elph 340HS produces images with a lot of noise, even in the best light, and image quality is downright poor in dim light. We recommend another Canon model, the PowerShot Elph 330 HS, as our Editors' Choice compact. Its lens isn't quite as long, but it does a much better job in low light—and it's less expensive.

Design and Features
The Elph 340 HS is quite small when you consider its 12x (25-300mm f/3.6-7) zoom lens. It measures just 2.3 by 3.9 by 0.9 inches (HWD) and weighs a mere 5.2 ounces. Canon sells it in black, silver, and purple. It's tough to find a camera that's smaller, but is still useable; the 2.1-by-3.8-by-0.9-inch, 4.4-ounce Sony Cyber-shot DSC-WX80 shaves a little bit of space and weight, and it borders on being perhaps a bit too compact for its own good. I was able to comfortably handle the Elph 340 HS, and slide it into my shirt pocket with ease; its point-and-shoot design doesn't offer a lot of need for manual controls.

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You'll find what controls there are on the rear, to the right of the LCD. There's a dedicated button that starts movie recording, and a four-way control that adjusts exposure compensation, flash settings, macro focusing, and the amount of information that's displayed over the Live View feed. There's also a Mobile Device Connect button that launches the Wi-Fi features at any time; previous models required you to be in playback mode to use the second function of the exposure compensation control to do so, although that's still there as an option. On the top plate you'll find the power button, zoom rocker, and shutter button, and a switch to change between Program, Hybrid Auto, and Creative Shot.

Depending on the mode you're shooting in, the overlay menu that's launched via the rear Func/Set button features different options. In Hybrid Auto and Creative Shot you can only control the self-timer, video resolution, and flash output. Switching to Program adds settings for the metering pattern, color output, white balance, ISO, scene modes, continuous drive mode, aspect ratio, image compression, and the output resolution. This is par for the course with Canon compacts. The Creative Shot mode carries over from the oddly shaped PowerShot N. I'm happy to see it in a more standard compact; it saves six versions of each photo, one standard version and additional five that have unique crops and color filters applied. It's a fun option that will appeal to the Instagram generation, and occasionally you get some very cool results. Canon has added the ability to determine what kind of effects are applied (you can choose from fully automatic selection, as well as limiting it to Retro, Monochrome, Special, and Neutral filters). This capability was missing from the PowerShot N, and it's good to see it here.

The rear display is 3 inches in size and packs a 461k-dot resolution. It's bright and can be viewed from extreme angles; I had no issues using it outdoors on a sunny afternoon. It doesn't offer any sort of touch input, and it's not as sharp as the 921k-dot displays found on some other cameras, like the premium Canon PowerShot S120. Extra resolution is useful for checking focus on images in the field, but for general review the 340 HS's display is adequate.

Canon's Wi-Fi feature set is quite good. The Elph 340 HS can transfer images to an iOS or Android device with ease; there's even NFC communication for quick pairing with compatible phones. In addition to transferring images directly to your phone, you can connect the Elph 340 HS to a network and post images directly to popular social networks, including Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. There's a little bit of setup required for that, and you'll need to activate an account on the Canon Image Gateway service, but I was able to work through it in only a few minutes, without having to plug the Elph 340 HS into a computer. The camera guides you through all the steps, but it's not quite as elegant as just entering your password directly as you can with a Samsung compact like the DV150F.

The Canon CameraWindow app (free via the iTunes App Store and Google Play) also supports remote control. A Live View feed streams to your phone or tablet, and you can zoom the lens, adjust the flash, and set the self-timer. The feed was quite smooth, even in the crowded Wi-Fi environment of PC Labs. CameraWindow also has a GPS logger function; when activated it keeps track of your movements, and can add that information to photos taken on the camera—just make sure that both devices are set to the same time.