Samsung WB1000

The South Korean Samsung new premium compact, WB1000, presents an excellent manufacturing quality. Beautiful, this 12.2MP camera has an apparently solid construction and finish of very high end. Its AMOLED display stands out as the main novelty.[--split--]

Regarding electronics, Samsung seems to have done a great job and the camera turns on quickly. The shooting is done with little latency. The ergonomics of the device are also very good: the camera fits comfortably in hand and the grip is a real plus.

The images are clean and on the wide-angle side, Samsung has included a 24mm quality, coupled with a decent x5 zoom (short if compared with the Panasonic equivalent, Lumix ZX1, with an 8x zoom.


Image quality still is the weak point of the brand, whatever the reason (choice of sensors, quality of processing chips, integrated firmware or a little of it all), the fact is that the images degrade quickly when the sun goes away. In this field Samsung has a good growth margin to reach Canon, Panasonic, Fujifilm and other brands in medium and low light conditions.


In HD 720p (1 280 x 720 pixels), this WB1000 can make good videos, if you don't zoom too much and the subjects don't move too much, because of the autofocus tendency, in this cases to don't know when to move also.

For 349 euro, this camera does not present the bets image quality in the market, but WB1000 offers one of the highest quality construction and finishing. So it will be more selected for its manufacturing quality and style than for its overall performance, and nowadays the design is a strong argument.