One digit makes all the difference

Author's Rating:

Pros: picture quality, design, speed, features, price.

Cons: slow auto focus, slightly soft images.

The Bottom Line: 
I really hope this camera holds up. It is well designed, takes great pictures, and is easy to use.

Author's Review
I recently tried the Samsung SL102 Camera, which took great pictures but broke down on the second day. I was set on avoiding Samsung, but was seriously impressed by the picture quality, and I found the newer model SL202 for a lower price than the older so I couldn't resist.

I am still worried about the durability of my new camera, but it's been about a week now and it hasn't broken yet. Other than that I must say that the SL202 has the same great image quality as the SL102, while fixing almost all of the other complaints I had.

This Samsung camera is a very attractive 10.l Mp point and shoot camera with a decent amount of options and even some manual picture controls. It looks a lot more upscale and solid than the 102 model, with a metal body all around and a flat, glass display. The only plastic parts on the camera are some of the buttons on the back.

The camera comes in several different colors (mine is a very pretty blue). It has a small rechargeable battery with not bulky chargers and power cords - it comes with a USB cable, used for charging and PC syncing (PC and MAC supported), and an A/C to USB power adapter.

The camera supports SD and SDHC cards. I have a 2GB card, which can store something like 350 pictures at the highest quality. It has various scene modes, auto mode, a smart mode (not sure what the difference is between smart and auto), a manual mode, and a movie mode with sound in up to VGA resolution limited in length by the capacity of the memory card.

There are several improvements over the previous model (SL102):

1. The various shooting modes are easier to select - there is a special rotary knob to do this. Still, the individual scene modes do not have separate places on the rotary dial - they are all bundled under a common "scene" selection and then the specific scene must be selected additionally.

2. The flash selection is remembered by the camera. The SL102 always defaulted to "suppressed flash", which was very inconvenient.

3. The LCD display is much nicer. It has an auto dimming feature and adjusts its brightness depending on the lighting conditions.

4. The cover of the mini USB port has been re-designed and it no longer obstructs the cord.

5. The release door and its locking mechanism for the battery/storage card compartment has been completely re-designed and now opens without any difficulties and closes securely without getting looser over time.

6. The shutter button has also been tweaked a little - the half press and full press are much better defined.

7. There is no cheap looking plastic anywhere on the cameras body.

There are a few things that have not been fixed though (I am comparing the two models, because they have identical menu system, look very similar, and take about the same quality pictures.)

1. The worst problem is the slow focus in low light. Often the camera has trouble focusing, despite the focus assist light.

2. The clock is still 24 hour style only.

3. The loophole for the wrist strap is tiny - I need one of those little watch screw drivers to get the cord through.

As I already said, the best part about this camera is the pictures quality. They are surprisingly noise free even in very low light conditions. The down side of this is that they look slightly soft and the colors are not as saturated as on some other cameras, but I do think that they look more natural this way.

The flash has a special red-eye removal mode, which combines the traditional pre-flash with some software post-processing that automatically analyzes the taken photo and removes red eye from it. It is a useful feature but significantly increases the time needed for the next shot.

Speaking of which, the camera is reasonably fast - boots up in about 4 seconds, takes about 2 seconds between shots without flash, and about 4 with the flash.

There are several self-timer modes - 2 sec, 10 sec, and combination, which takes one picture after 10 seconds and another after additional 2 seconds.

The battery life seems to be excellent - I haven't timed it exactly, but I have not had to re-charge it yet after about a week of playing with it.

I particularly like the auto mode - it always seems to select better settings than I do manually and is almost always better than the scene modes I select too. For all practical purposes I would be perfectly happy without any of the other shooting modes (except movie mode, which I have not tried yet though.) The only thing I usually select manually is the flash, the camera even picks up the macro setting on its own whenever it is needed.

If this camera does not break for at least a year it would be a great purchase. I need it to last now because I already sold my old Fuji.