Samsung NV100HD review

Samsung’s metal-build model features slim dimensions yet packs in a broad feature set

With hyperbole more commonly attributed to a theme park ride, the NV100HD’s packaging ambitiously trumpets its contents as providing ‘the ultimate HD experience’. Perhaps it’s because that ridiculous notion actually serves to lower expectations that Samsung’s latest flagship point-and-shoot – further claimed as the world’s highest spec compact, with 14.7 effective megapixels and 28mm wide-angle zoom lens – proves in many respects a pleasant surprise.

From the front, rather than signalling a piece of cutting-edge technology, the muted silver and red detailing of our review sample NV100HD is rather retro. If you’d asked Fifties boffins to imagine what a camera might look like in 2008, they would have undoubtedly come up with something similar. Pity then that its fascia attracted minor scuffs and scratches during our review period.

Switch the camera on and the large three-inch touch-screen LCD that almost takes up the entirety of the back plate bursts almost instantly into life for framing the shot. While bright, clear and reasonably intuitive to navigate, with rows of cartoon icons signalling the way, the screen itself is very responsive to the touch. So much so that it’s very easy to call up a function adjacent to the one you wanted when tapping it with a fingertip. Still, it’s a definite improvement on the ‘press and guess’ method of operation favoured by earlier NV-range models, with their unmarked black piano key-like buttons that served mostly to frustrate.

Touch-screen operation of course allows for minimal additional controls, though the NV100HD finds room for twin buttons at the rear for operating the zoom, and a second pairing beneath for accessing the set-up menu folders and playback rapidly.

Up on the coloured strip that extends the width of the top plate, before tapering down to one side, we find a recessed power button encircled by an attractive blue light when active. Encircling this again is a built-in speaker, a larger shutter button and a small, ridged Mode wheel featuring Auto, Program and Manual stills shooting modes, plus 13 pre-optimised scene modes covering the usual suspects of landscapes, fireworks and, unusually, one for cafes!

Also included on the dial is Samsung’s now-signature Beauty Shot mode to digitally airbrush your subject of freckles or zits, plus a dedicated Night mode, dual image stabilisation for counteracting camera shake (optical image stabiliser plus higher ISO and faster shutter speed) and, finally, Video mode.

Here users find the high-definition video clips that give rise to the model’s HD suffix, though at a maximum 1,280 x 720 pixels, rather than a full HD 1,920 x 1,080. Disappointingly, an HDMI cable so users can hook the camera up to an HDTV set or device is an optional extra, as is any media card, although a reasonable 40MB internal capacity gets users started out of the box.

The broadness of the NV100HD’s light sensitivity range is welcome, stretching from ISO 80 up to 3200, though straying above 1600 will see a resolution drop to just three megapixels to limit the visibility of noise, which is, over 800, frankly terrible. Indeed still images from the camera are a curious affair. On the back screen colours appear muted, but when viewing on a desktop the opposite is true, primary colours boosted to almost Martin Parr-esque levels, which for autumnal landscapes admittedly works well.

Output does, however, possess a definite digital look and feel, with a crispness that looks more like heavy in-camera processing than a pin-sharp lens. Perhaps inevitably, purple pixels are evident on close inspection between areas of high contrast, yet not distractingly so; although highlights do burn out in strong sunlight.

Like most point-and-shoot compacts, the NV100HD may not be perfect then. But for the money, it’s a reasonably sound investment.