The S400 is supplied with the blue CB-2LS / CB-2LSE battery charger. Simply push the battery into the charging bay, the LED on top of the charger will indicate red during charging and turn green once the battery is fully charged. A full charge of a flat battery takes around 2 hours (which works out to an approximate 330 mA charge rate).

The S400's Compact Flash compartment can be found on the right side of the camera (from the rear), it is opened by sliding a lever upwards, the door will spring open. Inside you will find a Compact Flash Type I slot. Opening the card door powers the camera off, however if there are images still being written the camera will emit a high pitch beep continually until writing is complete to warn you not to remove the CF card.

On the left side of the camera, behind a rubber cover, are the A/V out and digital (mini-USB) connectors.

The rubber cover for these connectors is about the only thing on the entire case which doesn't look right, it simply doesn't blend in to the overall design. It's a real shame Canon didn't countersink these and produce a more flush design cover.

The S400 has an all new 3x optical zoom lens, this lens provides an equivalent focal length zoom range of 36 to 108 mm. The lens has a maximum aperture of F2.8 at wide angle and F4.9 at telephoto, which is a little on the slow side but to be expected (and fairly typical) for this size of lens system. When powered off the lens is retracted and automatically covered. The lens takes approximately 1.2 seconds to extend, total power up time is slightly longer (see timings section of this review).

On the bottom of the camera you'll find a metal tripod mount, unfortunately (and as seems to be the case with ultra-compacts) the mount itself is too close to the camera edge (left side in this case) to be very useful. The problem with close-to-edge mounts is that they tend to cause the camera to tilt in one direction when the mount bolt is tightened. Obviously this may not be a big issue for the target user of this camera.

In the top right corner of the camera you'll find the flash unit, to the left of this is the AF assist lamp. At Auto ISO the flash has a quoted range of 3.5 m (12.5 ft) at wide angle and 2.0 m (6.6 ft) at telephoto. The AF assist lamp (which can be disabled) is used to illuminate the subject with a white light in low light situations, this improves the chances of TTL AF system being able to make a good AF lock.

Supplied in the box are:

 • Canon PowerShot S400
 • 32 MB Compact Flash card
 • Battery Pack NB-1LH (840 mAh)
 • Battery Charger CB-2LS(E)
 • Wrist strap
 • USB Cable
 • Video Cable (A/V)
 • CD-ROM (Driver, Appl. software)
 • Manual