Gadgetory

well this is David with the verge and this is the Samsung nx20 it's the company's flagship mirrorless camera but it really has just as much in common with the DSLR as with a smaller camera like a Micro Four Thirds shooter take the body for instance it's considerably larger and heavier than a camera like the Sony NEX f3 but in the DSLR category is really small it weighs just under a pound and a half with the kit lens on and it's definitely not a camera you're ever going to put in your pocket but it goes nicely into a bag or a backpack and certainly isn't as big as most DSLRs we've seen there's a grip on the front for your right hand but it's a little small and angled kind of oddly so it's not quite as comfortable to hold in one hand as it could be there's also a pop-up flash on the camera but it's not very versatile and kind of just blasts light at your subject fortunately there's a hot shoe above it so you can add another flash if you need one there are buttons and dials all over the camera again more like a DSLR in this case but it's still kind of a hybrid there are some controls for basic things like shutter speed and aperture and there's the scroll wheels and buttons for a lot of things but you'll still do some digging into menus if you want to change bracketing settings and like things like that in addition to the standard controls wheels and buttons and all that Samsung has a clever I function control system which lets you press the AFN button on the lens and then use the focusing ring to change a couple of the most important settings for whatever mode you're in overall the menu interface is fine it's basically the same as every other camera you scroll right and left to get through different lists and scroll up and down through them there are a couple of quick settings menus that let you jump in and change a few things really quickly which make it easier but for the most part it's just a similar menu to what you've seen before it all happens on a really nice-looking six hundred and fourteen thousand dot AMOLED display on the back the display is really nice we've seen some with sharper displays but this one is perfectly sharp and it's totally viewable outdoors and it also articulates which is nice it moves around and so you can point the screen at almost any angle so if you're shooting above your head or even facing the camera at yourself you can still see the screen of course if you don't want to use the LCD you can use the NX 20s electronic viewfinder they're a bunch of advantages to an electronic viewfinder but I'm always partial to optical viewfinders just because they give you a more accurate view of what you're actually shooting there's standard shooting features and filters lots of scene modes and a few funky things you can do to your pictures but some of Samsung's wildest ones like a picture in picture mode or something that lets you put your head into an interesting Sene are all left off one feature that does make it over is the nx20 s Wi-Fi sharing functionality there's a remote viewfinder app for iOS and Android which lets you use your phone as a viewfinder and even take pictures or control the flash so you can just put the camera down and then walk away with your phone and focus and take pictures and then save them to your phone another feature called mobile link gives you a really easy way to get pictures off your camera and onto your phone so you can easily share them it's again it's a companion app for iOS and Android unfortunately it doesn't work as you shoot like an eye-fi card does you take pictures and then select a bunch to share to your phone later in general the nx20 takes great pictures that's not surprising it has a twenty point three megapixel aps-c sensor that's equal to or better than a lot of DSLRs and it definitely shows photos are really sharp you get really accurate colors though they're occasionally a bit dull but not always it's kind of odd the 18 to 55 millimeter kit lens that the nx20 ships with isn't the sharpest lens we've seen but we've tested some of Samsung's other glass like an 85 millimeter F one point for prime and some of its lenses are really really sharp dynamic range is okay but if you're shooting shadowed buildings with bright sky you're definitely still gonna run into some trouble low-light performance is pretty impressive too I shot up to about ISO 3200 without any real problem oddly the ISO auto setting is set to only go up to 800 which can cause some problems with shutter speed and aperture especially since the kit lens is only an F 3.5 you can change the auto ISO level though and you should iso levels do go up to twelve thousand eight hundred but shots add a couple of the higher levels are really really noisy and you should probably avoid them if at all possible autofocus is okay but not great it frequently racks past the focus point before coming back but usually and as long as you're in good light it's pretty fast and typically focuses on the right thing you can also shoot 1080p video at 30 frames per second and it looks great just like the still images you get continuous autofocus while recording and it focuses really smoothly so you get almost a cinematic feel which is pretty cool image stabilization is also really good it's built into Samsung's lenses and just works really well the camera is pretty fast too it can turn on and capture shot about two and a half seconds which is fast without being overly impressive and in single shot mode can take a picture about every second and a half in continuous shooting it can take about eight shots per second but only up to about 13 shots at basically freezes for about 15 seconds while it processes all the images that's not good and might actually mean you miss more shots than you'd think there are very few things wrong with the nx20 it's a great camera but the problem is it's just too expensive at $1,099 it's or expensive than a lot of Micro Four Thirds cameras it's also a lot more expensive than a number of entry-level DSLRs the nx20 is a really good camera but I'm not sure who I'd recommend it to