Samsung NX500 Unboxing & Hands-On Review

Samsung isn’t quite the first brand to come to mind when you think about digital cameras. And while it’s had its fair share of hits and misses over the last few years – you’ve got to hand it to them for trying. Their latest attempt at making inroads in the digital photography market comes in the form of an $800 compact, interchangeable lens camera, that shoots 4K video – the NX500.

The retro-styled camera officially launched in the US this weekend, but has been available for about a week now in South Korea where we managed to get our hot little hands on it.

The NX500 has the highest resolution APS-C sized sensor available today – a whopping 28 megapixels and it can shoot 4K video just like Samsung’s top of the line NX1 but at $700’s less.

This camera is stunningly fast – thanks in part to Samsung’s experience building smartphone processors. The NX500 turns on faster than the time it takes to flick the on/off switch, and its menu system zips along like a speedskater on ice.

With a UHS 1 SD card it can shoot about 45 SuperFine JPEGs in a burst, at 9 frames per second. Videos are ready to play quite literally the moment you’re done recording them too. It’s not all that great though once you enter RAW mode as we could only get it to shoot five in a burst before it slowed down, even with our extra fast card.

Autofocus was quick and reliable and we particularly liked the way it could grab onto things all the way to the edges of the frame. Low light was a bit more of a challenge though, although no worse than other cameras in this price class.

On the flip side of things the NX500, unlike other similarly priced compact system cameras like the Sony A6000 doesn’t manage to provide any sort of viewfinder – built-in or with an optional attachment. The only way to compose your images is with the OLED touch screen, which should be fine for most smartphone users wanting to move up, but not for those used to shooting with a DSLR.

For the most part however, we found the touch screen to be pretty good and perfectly usable even under very bright conditions. The screen tilts up 90 degrees for taking selfies and pivots down making it easier to get a high perspective. Leveraging again on its smartphone technology, the multi-touch screen of the NX500 is very responsive, it lets you zoom in or swipe through photos like you would on an iPhone.

But not everything is an engineering home run, there are some challenges too. For example Samsung engineers haven’t been able to figure out a way to incorporate a built-in flash, so one has to carry the included hot-shoe mountable flash instead. In contrast Sony’s RX100M3, which is about half the size of the NX500, has both a built-in electronic viewfinder and a flash.

All this considered, the NX500 represents a step in the right direction for Samsung, and the timing couldn’t be better. The so-called mirrorless camera market is maturing and people are starting to realize they can take DSLR-quality pictures with far smaller cameras.

In the limited time we spent with it, we can confidently say that based on merit, the NX500 deserves to be on everyone’s short list.

The question now is if you’re willing to place your bets on a company known more for their smartphones and televisions. If you ask me, its for these reasons in particular that you should.

Editor’s Note: This article is a special contribution from Michael Josh Villanueva of MichaelJosh.com.

YugaTech

YugaTech is the oldest and longest-running technology website in the Philippines. It was founded in 2002 as a personal website and reformatted into a full tech publication in 2005. YugaTech has been in the forefront of the tech industry in the Philippines for the past 20 years.

4 Comments

Anna says:

9 years ago

I just got this one from a Samsung store in Manila. Unfortunately, I think the one I got is defective.

I just found out that every time I set the IOS mode to ON (mode 1 or mode 2), it is giving me double image or makes the image more blurry (see pics). Is that something really normal? I tried the demo units in stores (Samsung and Camera Haus) and the sales people tells me there’s really something wrong with my unit but Samsung Customer Care refuses to acknowledge there’s something wrong with it. Is it me, or IOS = Blurry image, really. I don’t know about them, but that just doesn’t seem right to me (oh and I know how to take pictures, been using DSLRs and a photography enthusiast for years). I also thought maybe I could try updating firmware but there’s no update yet so I don’t know if this will ever be fixed.

Here’s pictures for you guys to see:
https://scontent-hkg3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xta1/t31.0-8/11406718_1427948360862316_4347944033876*****1_o.jpg

If anyone is planning on buying this might want to consider to wait or check other options, or be ready to quick test all features (and it’s a lot, I tell you) once you got it and test it under all conditions, I got burned by Samsung big time on this one. It’s now a 40k worth of paperweight for me.
- Reply
wapwap says:

10 years ago

review with no sample picture?
- Reply

Abe Olandres says:

10 years ago

Sample and comparison photos are shown in the embedded video, starting at 4:49.

james says:

10 years ago

I got samsung NX300 , barelt used since I got lots of cameras,,want to sell it,comes with branded bag,good as new..
- Reply