Introduction

Ease of Use

The new NX210 has an angular and hard-edged design that is designed to appeal more to the serious photography enthusiast than upgraders from a simpler compact camera. To that end, the NX210 employs the same 20 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor as its predecessor, which is around 1.5x physically larger than the Micro Four Thirds system and promises to rival the image quality of the majority of DSLRs, whilst still maintaining a small camera body that is very similar to the likes of the comparable Sony NEX, Olympus PEN and Panasonic G-series.

Unlike the all-plastic NX1000 entry-level model, the Samsung NX210 has a mostly-metal body with a metal lens mount, which goes some way to explaining why it's priced at a more mid-level £699 / $899. First impressions of the NX210 are very positive, with even better build quality that we've come to expect from recent Samsung cameras. The NX210 has a more functional look than the more futuristic NX1000, with a serious all-black colour, sharper edges and a much more tactile curved handgrip that has a textured area where your fingers rest and a rubberised finish to the rest of the grip and the rear panel.

At 116.5 x 62.5 x 36.6mm, the NX210 is exactly the same size as its predecessor. Once again there's no viewfinder or built-in pop-up flash, and while beginners probably won't notice the lack of an EVF, being more used to holding a camera at arm's length than holding one up to their eye, they will undoubtedly miss having a flash, while the reverse is probably true for more experienced photographers. Flash is provided for by a supplied accessory (SEF-15A) which slots into the Smart Shoe on top of the camera, but although you no longer have to pay for it, it does add to the bulk of the camera and isn't as well integrated as some of its main rivals. There's also an optional EVF (EVF10) which slots into the same connector, with caveats regarding cost and size, and you can obviously only use the EVF or the flash at one time. The EVF wasn't provided for this review, so we can't comment further on its performance. A new accessory is the EM10 external microphone, which features adjustable levels, a built-in headphone jack and no external cabling.

We tested the NX210 with the new Samsung 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS III lens, which has the built-in i-Functionality and an upgraded metal mount. The 18-55mm is also optically stabilised, important as the NX system doesn't offer in-body stabilisation. We'd advise choosing the 18-55mm lens rather than the comparable 20-50mm for this reason, unless you really need the latter's smaller dimensions.

The upgraded 18-55mm kit lens features Samsung's now standard i-Function button, an innocuous looking button on the lens barrel which when pressed activates a sub-menu of key options and allows you to change them simply by turning the focus ring. Consecutive presses of the i-Function button moves through the five available settings - shutter speed and/or aperture, exposure compensation, white balance and ISO. The latter two settings can optionally be turned on or off in the main menu, allowing a degree of user customisation.

While the i-Function button does provide a quick way of accessing certain key settings, I can't help feeling that the idea is best suited to a camera with an electronic viewfinder where you can hold it up to your eye, press the button and turn the focus ring with your left hand, and grip the camera with your right. Holding the NX210 at arm's length to view the settings while pressing the i-Function button and rotating the focus ring just seems a little cumbersome, especially when you can also use the rear control wheel to perform the same actions, something that I found myself doing by default.

Front	Rear

Large metal neck strap eyelets are located on top of the NX210 at the sides, with the rear dominated by the fixed 3 inch AMOLED screen. On the left side of the body there are no controls. On the right is a plastic cover that houses a HDMI port for connecting the NX210 to a HD television or monitor and a USB port. The latter port can be used as a remote socket for use with the new SR2NX02 remote shutter release, which is not backwards compatible with the NX200.

On the front of the Samsung NX210 is a small focus-assist and self-timer indicator lamp, lens release button, and the metal NX lens mount. Located on the bottom of the camera is the shared SD / SDHC / SDXC memory card slot and battery compartment, protected by a plastic lockable cover. The BP1030B (1030mAh) battery provides up to 320 shots under the CIPA testing standard. Also found on the bottom of the camera is a metal tripod mount which is commendably located in-line with the centre of the base.

The NX210 uses the same built-in dust-removal system as the original NX100 and NX10 models, which vibrates the sensor 60,000 times per second to remove any unwanted specks from appearing in your images. By default this feature is turned off, something of an oversight by Samsung, so make sure to enable it so that it works every time you start-up the camera (it only takes about one second). You can also perform a manual sensor clean at any point.

The NX210 has a so-called Smart Shoe that will accept compatible Samsung flashguns (currently the SEF-42A, SEF-20A and SEF-15A models) and other accessories such as the previously mentioned EVF and the GPS unit (GPS10). Also found on top of the NX210 are four holes for the speaker, holes marked left and right for the stereo sound, a small dial for setting the shutter speed and zooming into and out of images during playback, and a tactile shutter button encircled by the on/off switch.

There's a traditional round dial with a positive click for the different exposure modes located on the far-right, which is a typical feature of DSLR cameras and enables you to quickly change between the various options. The usual selection of Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual are available for the more experienced photographers, and the more beginner-friendly Scene modes, Smart Auto and Lens Priority mode are also accessed via this dial.

When the Lens Priority shooting mode is selected, the NX210 automatically recognise what type of lens has been attached and suggests a list of scene modes to choose from that are tailored to that specific lens. While this helps to narrow down the usual vast number of choices, it would have been more effective if combined with the Smart Auto shooting mode, rather than being a stand-alone mode, as you still have to pick from the scene modes that are presented to you. This shooting mode now also lets you select six of the ten filter effects that the camera offers.

Smart Auto is Samsung's equivalent of the intelligent auto modes now found on most competitors models. You simply point the NX210 at a scene or subject and the camera hopefully recognizes it from 16 commonly used presets and automatically adjusts its settings to deliver optimum results. This means that it's not necessary for the user to manually delve into scene modes to call up the likes of 'landscape' or 'flower', essentially making the NX210's operation merely a case of point and shoot.

Front	Side

In practice the Smart Auto system works very well, with the NX210 usually picking the most appropriate combination of settings for the current situation. Obviously not all situations are covered by the scene modes that the system uses, but it does work for the majority of the time. It makes it possible for the less experienced photographer to easily take well-exposed, sharp pictures of people, scenery and close-ups by simply pointing and shooting the camera and is more intuitive than the traditional scene modes (which are still available).

Also found on the mode dial is the familiar Video icon. The NX210 can record high-resolution Full HD 1080p 1920x1080 and 720p 1280x720 movies in the 16:9 aspect ratio and standard VGA 640x480 or 320x260 movies in the 4:3 aspect ratio, all using the H.264 format at 30 frames per second (you can optionally shoot 720p at 60fps). There's also a new cinematic 1920x810 pixel, 24fps mode.

The Movie mode is accessed by selecting the Movie option on the shooting mode dial and then pressing the shutter button to begin recording, or via the dedicated one-touch record button on the rear of the camera. Stereo sound is recorded during video capture via the small internal mics on top of of the camera. The HDMI port allows you to connect the NX210 to a high-def TV set, but unfortunately Samsung have decided to cut costs and not include a HDMI cable as standard in the box, which means that you'll have to purchase one separately to take advantage of this camera's HD connectivity.

You can shoot movies using any of the creative modes, giving you lots of control over exposure, and you can also change the aperture and shutter speed during recording, albeit at the expense of recording the mechanism on the soundtrack. The NX210 offers the ability to set the white balance. metering and use any of the Picture Wizard settings during video recording as well as still images, which instantly lends an interesting art-house effect to your home movies. You can set a video to be played back at various slower or faster speeds (x0.25, x0.5, x1, x5, x10 and x20), the self-timer and image stabilizer can be used, a fade-in or out can be set, and a voice clip can be added.

You can also use a zoom lens during recording with the focusing set as for still images by half-pressing the shutter button. On the negative side, you'll find that if you choose continuous auto-focus, areas of the video will be blurred before becoming sharp again as the camera tries to refocus and the noise of the AF system is a little intrusive. Using manual focus is trickier but will ultimately produce better looking and sounding movies. On a more positive note, having the AF system is better than not being able to auto-focus at all, as with some DSLR cameras that offer video recording.

Completing the NX210's shooting modes are the Magic and Wi-Fi modes. The former provides a choice of 10 Smart Filters and 12 Magic Frames, including Soft Focus for a warm ambience and Half-Tone Dot for a comic-book look. The latter mode offers built-in Wi-Fi, with an array of options available. Users can email their images, upload them directly to Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket and YouTube, or instantly copy them to a home PC via Auto Backup. Samsung’s AllShare Play and Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud services provide free storage space that's accessible by anyone with an account. MobileLink allows you to directly send images to a compatible smartphone or tablet, while Remote Viewfinder uutilises a smartphone as a live image previewer. Finally TV Link takes the place of a physical HDMI connection by playing back photos on any device that's connected to the same wireless access point as the camera.

Top	Flash

Turning to the rear of the NX210, the 3-inch, 614,000-dot rear LCD screen is the same impressive unit from the NX100, incorporating AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology that provides a number of key advantages over traditional LCD screens. These include easier viewing in bright sunshine and a very wide viewing angle, 10,000 times faster refresh rate than conventional LCDs, less power consumption and a high contrast ratio of 10,000:1. A newaddition to the NX210 is a useful dual-axis level gauge which helps to ensure that both horizontal and vertical orientations are level.

To the right of the LCD is a familiar round navigation pad with four buttons above and two below. Starting at the top are very handily placed buttons for instant movie recording and setting the exposure compensation, then the self-explanatory Menu button. Unfortunately there's no dedicated button for locking the exposure.

The main menu system on the NX210 is very straight-forward to use. There are five main menus - Camera, Movie, Custom, Settings and GPS - presented as a row of horizontal icons, and due to the large LCD screen and restricting the number of on-screen choices to six, the various options and icons are clear and legible. If you have never used a digital camera before, or you're upgrading from a more basic model, reading the easy-to-follow manual before you start is a good idea. Unfortunately Samsung have chosen not to supply it in printed format, so you can't carry it with you for easy reference.

The fourth button is the useful Fn, which now provides quick and easy access to virtually all of the most important camera settings (16 in total) via the very useful Smart Panel. This is an intuitive graphical interface that allows you to move around and choose the main camera settings via a combination of the LCD screen, the navigation wheel and/or the shutter speed dial on top of the camera.

Used in combination with the four directions on the navigation pad that set the Display, which cycles through the various display modes on the LCD screen, Auto-focusing mode, ISO and Self-timer/Drive, you really can access most of the NX210's key options with one press of a button, although changing them takes a couple more presses.

Surrounding the four navigation pad buttons is a circular control wheel which is used for, amongst other things, changing the aperture by turning from left to right and back again. As with the shooting mode dial, this is a common feature found on some DSLR cameras, so you'll be right at home if you've used a DSLR before - compact camera users will need to become accustomed to using this dial. In the Shutter Priority and Manual modes things are actually unexpectedly easy, as the Zoom dial on top of the camera comes into play. You simply turn the rear control wheel to change the aperture and use the Zoom dial to set the shutter speed.

Memory Card Slot	Battery Compartment

Completing the rear controls are buttons for playing back and deleting your images, with the latter also doubling up as the Custom button, which activates the Optical Preview (essentially a digital Depth of Field Preview) by default and can be alternatively set to either One Touch White Balance or One Touch RAW+.

Unlike a conventional DSLR camera which uses a phase detection auto-focus system, the NX210 employs the same Contrast AF system that is commonly used by compact cameras. Experienced photographers will now be tutting loudly at the thought of having to use a traditionally slower system, but thankfully this decision hasn't resulted in a slow and unpredictable AF - quite the contrary in fact. The Samsung NX210's focusing speed is on a par with most DSLRs, with an autofocus algorithm that delivers precise autofocusing in as little as 100ms. As well as the out-and-out speed, there were also very few occasions when the NX210 failed to lock onto the subject, especially when using the centre AF point, which can be usefully set to one of four different sizes.

There are four AF Area modes on offer, including Selection AF with a selectable focus area, Multi AF, Face Detection, and Self-Portrait Tracking, with Single, Continuous and Manual AF Modes available. Manual focusing is assisted by the 'enlarged display' function. Once you have selected manual focus mode on the lens barrel, turning the manual focus ring automatically increases the magnification on the LCD display, which is a big help in getting the focus spot on. This is real, non-interpolated magnification, very useful for accurate manual focusing - provided you find a way to steady the camera. The screen cleverly returns to normal magnification when you stop using the manual focus ring for a few seconds. Metering options include Multi, Center-weighted and Spot, while the ISO range runs from 100-12800. There are 7 white balance presets plus Auto and Custom settings and the ability to set a precise Kelvin value, and if you can't make up your mind the white balance, exposure and even the Picture Wizard settings can all be bracketed.

The start-up time from turning the NX210 on to being ready to take a photo is impressively quick at less than a second. The NX210 successfully achieves focus virtually all of the time with the 18-55mm kit lens, helped by the AF assist lamp - the NX210 doesn't have any notable problems locking onto the subject in low-light situations. It takes about 1 second to store a single full-resolution JPEG image, allowing you to keep shooting as they are being recorded onto the memory card, with a brief LCD blackout between each image. Storing a single RAW image takes around 6 seconds, and unfortunately it does lock up the camera while the file is being written to memory- you'll quickly grow tired of seeing the onscreen message "Processing" when shooting in the RAW format.

The Samsung NX210 has a very good Burst mode which enables you to take 8 frames per second for up to 11 JPEG images at the highest image quality, or 8 RAW images, but again be prepared to wait for a long time for the camera to process all the images - it's so slow for RAW images that an on-screen progress bar appears! You can also choose a slower 3fps rate for 15 JPEGs. There's also a special Burst mode that records 30 frames per second, albeit only at 5 megapixel JPEG resolution, with slower 15 and 10fps options also available.

Once you have captured a photo the Samsung NX210 has a fairly good range of options when it comes to playing, reviewing and managing your images. You can instantly scroll through the images that you have taken, view thumbnails (up to 40 onscreen at the same time), zoom in and out up to 14.2x magnification, view slideshows, delete and protect an image and set the print order. The Image Edit option offers a number of different ways to alter the look of an already-captured photo, including redeye fix, backlight, changing the photo style, resizing, rotating, face retouch and apply smart filters. The DISP button toggles detailed settings information about each picture on and off, such as the ISO rating and aperture / shutter speed, and there are small RGBY histograms available.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 20.3 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 7Mb.

The Samsung NX210 produced images of excellent quality during the review period. The 20.3 megapixel APS-C CMOS megapixel sensor used in the NX210 produces noise-free JPEG images at ISO 100-800, with ISO 1600 also looking very good. ISO 3200 only shows a little noise, while the fastest settings of ISO 6400 and 12800 are quite a lot noisier and suffer from softening of fine detail and a loss of saturation, but the images are still perfectly usable for small prints and resizing for web use. The NX210 does apply quite a lot of noise reduction to the JPEGs, as demonstrated by the RAW files which have more noise at the comparable high ISO settings.

The images were a little soft straight out of the NX210 at the default sharpening setting and ideally require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera setting for JPEG files. The night photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds and bulb mode of 8 minutes allowing you to capture plenty of light.

Colours were vibrant without being over-saturated in the default Standard Picture Wizard mode, and you can always choose Vivid if you want even more punch or one of the other seven presets to change the mood of your JPEG images, with three customisable settings also available. The Panorama shooting mode and range of Smart Filters are welcome additions, although the Magic Frames are rather less useful.

Noise

There are 8 ISO settings available on the Samsung NX210. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting, with JPEG on the left and RAW on the right.

JPEG	RAW
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

File Quality

The Samsung NX210 has 3 different JPEG image quality settings available, with SuperFine being the highest quality option, and you can also shoot in RAW format. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

20M SuperFine (6.50Mb) (100% Crop)	20M Fine (3.89Mb) (100% Crop)
20M Normal (2.44Mb) (100% Crop)	20M RAW (32.3Mb) (100% Crop)

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are a little soft at the default sharpening setting and benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. You can also change the in-camera sharpening level.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Samsung NX210 are Smart Flash, Auto, Auto+Red-eye reduction, Fill-in, Fill-in+Red-eye reduction, 1st Curtain, 2nd Curtain and Off . These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Flash Off - Wide Angle (18mm)	Flash On - Wide Angle (18mm)
Flash Off - Telephoto (55mm)	Flash On - Telephoto (55mm)

And here are a couple of portrait shots. Neither the Auto setting or the Red-eye reduction mode caused any amount of red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Red-eye reduction	Red-eye reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Samsung NX210's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds and there's also a Bulb setting of up to 8 minutes, which is great news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 15 seconds at ISO 100. I've included a 100% crop of the image to show what the quality is like. The camera takes the same amount of time again to apply noise reduction, so for example at the 15 second setting the actual exposure takes 30 seconds.

Night Shot	Night Shot (100% Crop)

Picture Wizard

Samsung's various Picture Wizard options are similar to Olympus' Picture Modes, Nikon's Picture Styles and Canon's Picture Controls, offering preset combinations of different sharpness, contrast, saturation and colour tone settings, all of which can be changed. The nine available Picture Controls are shown below in the following series, which demonstrates the differences. There are also three additional Custom styles so that you can create your own looks.

Standard	Vivid
Portrait	Landscape
Forest	Retro
Cool	Calm
Classic

Smart Filters

The NX210 offers ten creative filter effects that can be applied to both stills and movies.

Vignetting	Miniature
Fish Eye	Sketch
Defog	Halftone Dots
Soft Focus	Old Film 1
Old Film 2	Negative

Panoramas

The Panorama mode captures either a Live Panorama, which allows you to also capture subject movement at several points during a sweeping panorama, or a 3D panorama.

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Samsung NX210 camera, which were all taken using the 20.3 megapixel SuperFine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Samsung NX210 enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Samsung RAW (SRW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera / Flash Closed

Front of the Camera / Flash Raised

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Isometric View

Rear of the Camera

Rear of the Camera / Turned On

Rear of the Camera / Image Displayed

Rear of the Camera / Main Menu

Rear of the Camera / Fn Menu

Top of the Camera

Bottom of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Side of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Front of the Camera

Memory Card Slot

Battery Compartment

Conclusion

The new NX210 is a very modest update of the NX200, principally adding a range of Wi-fi connectivity options to a 9-month-old camera. While we still like the NX210's excellent image quality, the compact system market has become even more crowded in the last year, so much so that the NX210 now feels a bit over-priced and under-powered compared to some of the competition.

The same 20 megapixel sensor from the NX200 delivers excellent still image quality, with a very usable ISO range of 100-3200 and 1080p HD video complete with auto-focusing, full control over the exposure settings, stereo sound and a wealth of other options. The NX210 offers all the advantages that a camera with a large APS-C DSLR sensor offers, namely better performance at higher ISOs and greater depth-of-field effects than the smaller Micro Four Thirds format. We'd be happy to regularly shoot with any setting from 100-1600, and even 3200 is handy at a push. The fastest settings of 6400 and 12800 are less useful, although considering the amount of megapixels that have been squeezed onto the sensor, we're still very impressed with the NX210's overall performance.

The price of the NX210 is higher than its predecessor, though (at least in the UK), and there are still a few interface sacrifices, in particular the lack of an AEL button and an integral flash or viewfinder and the continued slow processing times when shooting in RAW mode, which detract from the camera's overall usability. The jury's still out on the i-Function button, too, with opinions divided about whether it's a genuinely useful innovation or just another way to differentiate the NX system from its competitors.

Ultimately the Samsung NX210 falls between two stools - the cheaper NX1000 offers a natural upgrade path for compact camera users, while the more expensive NX20 is the obvious choice as a DSLR replacement. For us that leaves the NX210 a little out in the cold, especially since Samsung haven't addressed the annoyingly slow RAW processing times or the lack of a built-in flash or viewfinder. We can still recommend the NX210, but it's no longer the stand-out model that the NX200 was...

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	3.5

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Samsung NX210 from around the web.

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