Canon has finally stepped into the vlogging camera arena, and it’s doing so with a quirky new point-and-shoot camera that is geared towards a mindless “set-it-and-forget-it” crowd. The new Canon PowerShot V10 is an adorable little camera that packs a fixed 19mm equivalent f/2.8 lens and marries it to a 20.9-megapixel one-inch-type sensor. It is aimed at the growing market of YouTube content creators, who are looking for a camera that is easy to use, compact, and delivers high-quality footage.
The Canon PowerShot V10 records 4K video at up to 30 fps and is designed to film yourself with an articulating screen, front and rear record buttons, stereo mics with a 3.5mm mic jack, a Micro HDMI port, digital image stabilization, and a kickstand for propping it up. The camera is expected to launch in June, and it is priced at $429.99.
What makes the Canon PowerShot V10 interesting is its throwback design, which reminds us of the ancient Flip Video cameras. And like those long-dead cameras, when held upright, it films horizontally, which makes it seem more suited for YouTube content creation than TikTok or Instagram Reels. You can turn it sideways for vertical recording, of course, but the built-in kickstand isn’t really designed to hold it up that way.
The camera’s two-inch touchscreen tilts forward 180 degrees for self-recording, and it doesn’t have many buttons, as it partially relies on touch controls using its postage stamp of a two-inch 3:2 LCD. Its simplistic offering of controls echoes the V10’s approach to entry-level content creation. It’s not a camera designed to offer control over every little setting, which is unfortunate since that can be helpful for beginners to grow and learn with.
The camera’s ISO range of 125 to 12,800 in stills mode is not even manually selectable, and the camera doesn’t support any kind of manual focusing. Perhaps those are fine if someone is only taking on-the-go videos, but the V10’s limitations remind us of the bad old days of digital point-and-shoot cameras — where settings are limited because you’re not to be trusted or respected enough to use them correctly. That ISO range, by the way, gets cut down to a maximum of 3200 for 4K filming and 6400 in 1080p. Also, the 20.9-megapixel sensor is only using an effective 13.1 megapixels for video and 15.2 megapixels for stills. Oh, but don’t worry, it’s got five levels of software skin smoothing.
Since the Canon PowerShot V10 is video-focused, it’s got some convenient features like a built-in neutral density filter, and its contrast-based autofocus supports face detection that can sense when you’re holding up a product to focus on it. But there’s no eye detection to speak of and no log recording or raw capture for photos, either. You’re limited to 8-bit recording in Rec.709 color with MP4 files. And the V10’s small stature (which weighs just 211 grams) means it only supports microSD cards, with a built-in 1,250mAh battery that recharges via USB-C and tops out at an estimated 55 minutes of 4K video recording.
