A good everyday point+shoot camera for the money (Samsung S1070)

Member Name: chrischuff

Product:	Samsung S1070
Date:	24/03/09 (283 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: More megapixels for your £ than anywhere else, very easy to use, good video

Disadvantages: limited features, a bit flimsy build quality

I'm going to go against the grain a bit, and try to write an honest critique which is contrary to all the other 5 star super-reviews on here.

I've just upgraded to this Samsung camera from my old Canon Powershot, the Canon had only 4mp so the step up to 10mp should be spectacular, right? well no, not exactly.

The truth is the 'step up' is not actually that noticeable, image quality is good but it certainly didn't wow me in any way. Pictures are however clear and crisply defined, as one would hope to expect from 10 million pixels

This camera has a few neat tricks up its sleeve like the face recognition and image stabilisation, but again these have failed to blow me away and don't seem to work entirely as intended. Feature-wise this camera is a bit limited and has only a handful of basic settings to choose from.

Time from button press to shot to your next shot is reasonable, even with the flash

The casing looks smart, and has a nice large and bright LCD screen on the back, but the camera feels quite light and plasticky compared to others I've used, I guess this might be an advantage for some people but I prefer a bit of heft so I know when I'm carrying it.

One area that I've been very happy is the video recording - This is quite memory hungry and I managed to create a 40Mb file in about 30 seconds, but the FPS and quality are really excellent and this camera will serve you well as a mini camcorder for those special moments

This camera also only takes 2 x AA batteries, I was worried the flash would use these up quickly but I've been very impressed so far (I use duracell standard)

I don't want to give a bad review, as its got a lot going for it and I've no doubt it will provide beautiful photos for me for a long time, but I can't help wishing that I'd spent a bit more and got something a bit more capable. Perhaps my perception has been spoiled by other cameras I've had before!


BUY IT: If you are looking for a straight forward, very easy to use point+shoot digital camera that gives great family snaps or nice video clips - You'll be hard pressed to get anything better in this price range.

DON'T BUY IT: If you are expecting the kind of capabilities commonly found on other 10Mp cameras - Its cheap for a reason!


I got this camera from Amazon for around £68, I have since seen it in Tesco for apporximately the same price.

I would also recommend at least a 4Gb memory card as they're cheap as chips these days and the pictures and video can soon fill it up

Summary: Good, but not amazing - It will take nice pictures, but its cheap for a reason.

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