There are many baby zoomer compacts out on the market these days, offering anything from 15x to 30x zoom. It’s into this crowded market segment Samsung is launching the PL210, with a 10x optical zoom lens as its main feature. That lens goes from 27mm to 270mm (in 35mm film camera terms), and has an aperture range of f/3.3 to f/5.9.
As you’d expect, there’s some image degradation at the telephoto end of the zoom range. Keep the lens at the wide-angle side, and you’ll get good, sharp images with nice colours albeit with somewhat flat contrast. Image noise exists even at ISO80 and becomes noticeable at ISO400 and above – the camera menus sensibly point this out to you. As long as you don’t have to enlarge the 14MP images, you should be happy with the results however.
As with many other compacts, the small built-in flash is difficult to use. It works best at close-range, but unless you’re careful, can overexpose and ruin the shot.
The PL210 shoots video in 720p resolution and MP4 format. With a bunch of smart filters and image stabilisation, you get pretty good results from the PL210, for the video at least. As with other small cameras, the microphone picks up just about any sound around you bar what you actually want recorded, and there’s no provision for an external mic.
Where the PL210 falls down is its overall performance. The camera wakes up quickly when you press the power button, but auto-focus can be hesitant even in easy lighting situations: the PL210 isn’t a quick-draw camera. Furthermore, the PL210 takes what feels like an age to write images to the MicroSD card – up to three seconds. A firmware update didn’t cure the slowness.
Samsung’s Smart Mode works very well with only the occasional odd decision. It’s also more responsive than the Program Mode which I resorted to only to pull down the exposure value and to test ISO levels.
One feature that stood out is ‘Face Whitening’, which is also in Samsung’s Windows-based Intelli-Studio software.
It didn’t do an awful lot beyond giving people’s countenances a mild bleach, and offering an unexpected display of prejudice.
In terms of build quality, the PL210 isn’t bad but feels a step behind its competitors with some switches and buttons stiff to use, or loose and wobbly. The shutter button has very little travel and it’s easy to accidentally take a picture while the camera is trying to focus, resulting in a blurry image. Despite that, the controls are logically placed and easy to manipulate with big fingers.
Most of the rear of the camera is taken up by the 3-inch LCD, which is sharp and doesn’t lag a great deal as you recompose shots and move the camera around. It does wash out in bright sunlight, though. Overall, there's little need to delve into the manual to work out how to use the PL210, so kudos to Samsung for achieving that.
With a 10x zoom, good image quality and a $329 retail price, this little compact could be a winner if Samsung fixes the irritatingly slow performance it suffers from.