Gadgetory

although it's a little more expensive than most competitors giving that it lacks a viewfinder the samsung nx500 offers a lot of useful features excellent video quality and action friendly performance that makes it a nice choice for families and travelers I'm Lori grinnin senior editor for CNET and this is the samsung nx500 the camera is an attractive retro two-tone it's solid feeling and has a big enough grip for a comfortable single-handed shooting as long as the lens is relatively lightweight I have no real complaints about the design I do wish it had a zoom switch on the camera to control power zoom lenses as some of its competitors do I don't really like the feel of the zoom ring on the lens or the position of the zoom buttons it doesn't have a built-in flash but Samsung bundles a hot chick flash the back display is nicely designed it can tilt down for overhead shots tilt up for waist level shots and flip up for selfies samsung's auto self chop mode kicks in when you flip it up which activates the self timer and invokes the company's Beauty shot that blurs your skin so that you look like you don't have any pores one of the NX 500s notable features is Samsung's auto shot mode in this mode the camera has several optimized settings for capturing peak action a baseball swing shot a jump in the air shot and a shot that triggers the shutter when the subject passes a specific line that you've indicated in the camera in addition to full-featured remote shooting options it has a novel Bluetooth shutter which gives you a basic shutter in contrast to the full manual controls that operates quickly after the initial pairing it's only on Android of course unsurprisingly the photo and video quality definitely surpasses its smaller sensor competitor the olympus EPL 7 the 4k video is excellent sharp and reasonably high contrast for a camera in its price class the photos look quite good and it's rendering of colors white balance and tonal range are very nice I'd say it's probably one of the better entertainer lens models under $1000 for photo quality overall I drank the NX 500s performance is very good but not spectacular it takes about 1.6 long seconds to power on focus and shoot partly because the lens has to extend the rest of its times are very good and it's continuous shooting speed is excellent at 9.1 frames per second with autofocus enabled and with a decent number of InFocus shots as long as you don't pine for a viewfinder which I admit I do the samsung nx500 probably has everything you need in a compact family and traveling camera