The camera worked well and felt good on my initial outing. The build quality is certainly up there with anything that Canon and Fuji have put together; it does not weigh much and is very slim with a great screen that is easy to see under all light conditions. I was also impressed with the speed of the auto focus when in its full auto mode; some of the other 10MP cameras struggle to do this quickly, especially when the light is low.
On that initial outing I filled my 1Gb card, then filled the 256Mb replacement I popped in, all on the same charge. So battery life is good - I was expecting the screen to sap the battery life, so this is a welcome surprise.
The A20 also seems to be quick when saving a shot to the card. I was timing writes on its 10MP fine mode at below 3 seconds. Considering that there is 10MPs worth of data for the ASIC to process this is good, showing that the processor is up to the job. Incidentally, the timings are around the same for my Ixus which is a lower CCD size.
As you can see the A20 makes easy work of all types of shots.
Ease of Use
This is where the A20 really shows off. The layout of the camera and menus is very intuitive. The modes are easy to identify and use; with only a single button press to access the mode menu, switching between them is easy and quick. There are a variety of built in photo modes ranging from the default Auto mode through to completely manual modes, with things like People, Landscape, Animal, Baby and even a Food mode. In the manual mode access to speeds and ISO modes is child's play. There is even a quick switch button to put you back into the Auto mode should you need to get back to it in a hurry.
Article comments
1 - rostislav danek
how about the shooting speed? i read in some rewievs that it is pretty slow rather anoying.
2 - Ashleigh
I never found to shoot speed to be an issue. It's at least as quick as my Ixus's.