High acquisition speed is an ever growing demand in confocal microscopy, although the development of high speed systems significantly progressed in resent years. A new kilo-beam confocal scanner has been developed based upon a novel optical geometry where the pinhole and microlens arrays are stationary. The light path contains a single moving part -a galvano-driven mirror serving three functions: scanning, descanning and rescanning. A novel design of the dichroic mirrors is such that slight variations of its angle relative to the light path are without effect on the positioning of the image. Compared to Nipkow-disk based scanners, the new 2D-array scanner conserves all positive features like real time capability, high resolution and low bleaching rates, but introduces more flexibility and an optimal synchronisation to the detecting CCD-camera. With the recent introduction of high speed electron multiplication CCD-cameras such an exact synchronisation has become an essential issue. Nevertheless, for ultra-high speed confocal imaging, the acuosto-optic deflector based technology is still the most flexible approach with the best speed/resolution ratio. Here, we compare the above mentioned technologies for the two major fields of application in life cell imaging that require real time acquisition: (i) ultra-high speed confocal imaging of elementary Ca²⁺ signals (e.g. Ca²⁺ sparks) with frame rates between 100–500Hz and (ii) 3D, 4D and 5D imaging of protein translocation and organelle imaging with frame rates between 0.5–30Hz.