Samsung NX200

After a abrupt hiatus, it seems the old megapixel wars are aback on in 2012. Aboriginal came Sony with its NEX-7, and now Samsung has breached the 20-megapixel barrier. But while Sony’s bunched admiration is affordable alone to the affluent gadget-obsessed, Samsung’s is durably in customer DLSR breadth at beneath than £500.

At that array of price, it’s never activity to be as absolutely featured as the Sony, and so it proves. There’s no chip viewfinder to bout the NEX-7’s amazing 2,400kpixel effort, and no advantage yet to buy an add-on. The Samsung can’t bout the Sony’s boundless 24.3-megapixel amount either, and there’s no angel stabilisation onboard or in the 20-50mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens that came with our analysis sample.

The gap amid the two cameras isn’t as alveolate as the blueprint and amount ability indicate, however. There’s no accepting about the abridgement of viewfinder, which can be a botheration in ablaze sunlight, and the NX200’s awning doesn’t bend out or hinge either. However, the affection of its 3in, 614kpixel AMOLED affectation is awfully good, and in best ablaze we had no agitation basic shots.

Handling, too, is exceptional. The NX200 is a actual bunched camera with a anatomy barometer a bald 25mm from advanced to aback at its thinnest point. Admitting its baby size, it sits calmly in the hand, with a large, acclaim arced anchor and evidently placed buttons and dials.

The controls are alluringly acknowledging and intuitive, and the highlight is Samsung’s i-Function system. This allows you to bang a button on the ancillary of the lens butt to aeon through assorted settings, and abuse the focus arena to change them. Depending on the approach you’re in, ISO and bang speed, aperture, white antithesis and acknowledgment advantage can all be adapted in this way. For lenses after the i-Function button, meanwhile, dials on the rear and the top of the camera acquiesce bang acceleration and breach to be adapted aloof as swiftly, and beat the Fn button in Program offers quick, onscreen admission to added settings such as white balance, metering and focus breadth modes.

Image affection is a highlight, too. In automated mode, acknowledgment and white antithesis were about atom on, and the added detail captured by the 20 megapixels was absolutely apparent over the 16-megapixel Sony Alpha SLT-A33 we acclimated for comparison. In low light, the unstabilised kit lens that came on our analysis assemblage meant we had to use hardly slower bang speeds, but advancement the acuteness didn’t accept too adverse an aftereffect on babble levels.

At ISO 3200, we begin shots were altogether usable, and alike at ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 babble wasn’t horrendous. It’s a far cry from its predecessor, the NX100, whose poor achievement in low ablaze fabricated cutting central after beam all but impossible. And that lens is appealing acceptable too, admitting the abridgement of stabilisation. It’s the aforementioned pop-out assemblage that came with the NX100 aback we advised it a year or so back, and it accepted aloof as good: aciculate beyond the frame, distortion-free at advanced bend and with an impressively low accident of bright aberration.

Performance, on the added hand, is middling. The NX200 will go from off to snapping its aboriginal attempt in two seconds, but shot-to-shot time for RAW and JPEG files is a diffuse 1.6 abnormal (it will alone shoot four frames in RAW afore the absorber fills up). There’s additionally a approach that captures 7fps for seven full-resolution RAW frames or 11 JPEG frames, which sounds impressive. However, the autofocus isn’t fast abundant to accumulate up, and capacity affective appear the lens or abroad from it artlessly stop the NX200 in its tracks. Worse still, already the camera snaps a arrangement of seven RAW shots, it again takes a added 39 abnormal to action those photos, during which time it’s absolutely above to input.