I don’t know if this is a short-term offer or a closeout or what, but this camera is a great deal at this price. I have a previous version (S95) and it is about as good as it gets for a small-sensor point-and-shoot. Very small yet highly configurable with excellent controls. You can get better at this size (e.g., the Sony DSC-RX100M III or one of its predecessors) but not at anywhere near this price.
Jonathan: There is no link to the deal.
A couple of comments:
I think this is the deal you are referring to:
Canon PowerShot S110 12MP Digital Camera with 3-Inch LCD (Black) $179
This is a very good compact point and shoot camera. It has a larger sensor than the less expensive cameras which should produce sharper pictures. And its lens is an f2.0 (f is the ratio of the diameter of the lens verses its focal length. The lower the ratio, the better for low light photography.)
I would guess this a close out, even though there is no limited quantity notice. I assume that it was discontinued in favor of the $300 S120. I don’t think that there is $120 difference in the specification for those two cameras.
BTW if you want to compare cameras, DPReview.com has an excellent tool for that.
However, you can get ridiculously good cameras for very little money these days.
I bought my wife a Canon PowerShot ELPH 150 IS Digital Camera for $130. It is now $99 the link. It speced better than her 8 year old Cannon Elph that had cost $300 new. The older camera still worked fine, but it could not use an SD card with more than 2GB of memory. Problem is that a 2GB or smaller memory card is very hard to find these days.
PS I bit on the S110. Thanks for the heads up Jonathan.
Thanks, and enjoy.
A few paragraphs down on Amazon’s page: “there is a newer version of this camera”, about $200 more.
Thanks for the heads up. They come out with an updated version every couple of years and you can get the old model on a closeout. These days that’s a pretty good heuristic for buying any camera.