On paper, Samsung's ST1000 is a very competitive offering: it has a 5x zoom, a large 3.5'' touchscreen display, 720p HD video and both GPS and WiFi, all inside a camera that's less than two centimetres thick.  Will this little box of tricks live up to the hype though?

Handling

Our first impressions of the ST1000 were rather mixed.  It has clearly been well put together, but we weren't reassured by the strength of the plastic used: both the cover that protects the GPS antenna and the front panel of the camera give way slightly when you press on them.  The mixture of colours can also be quite striking, with a blue backlight around the power button and the large red flash of the GPS antenna standing out.


At the back, you can't help but notice the 3.5'' touchscreen display, which takes up almost all of one side of the camera.  We found it to have a decent resolution and bright enough to use outside, but not as ready for difficulty conditions as an OLED screen like the one on the WB1000.  There is, however, one big problem: the tactile surface is far too sensitive.  The slightest tap leads you straight into the menus, and if you're holding it for any amount of time without being careful, you'll be lucky to find you haven't accidentally changed a setting.  It's even more annoying because the space at the right-hand side isn't big enough to rest your thumb, so it ends up on the right of the screen, which is exactly where you choose your exposure mode.  You can also flip through the auto, programme and video modes by shaking the camera gently, which is all too easy when you're walking …

While we're on the subject of things that irritated us, the zoom control is absolutely miniscule, which makes it both uncomfortable and inaccurate.  The button that launches playback mode is also incredibly small, and, unlike other touchscreen cameras we've seen, there's no way of accessing it using the screen itself.  In general, the interface isn't always very intuitive, but there aren't too many headaches.

Samsung has gone for microSD cards too, which means you'll need an adapter if you have an SD card reader and that you'll have more chance of losing the tiny card when you take it out of the camera.  We'd advise getting a large microSD and leaving it in the camera and using the USB cable to copy your photos on to a computer … but then you'll need to keep the cable on you when you're travelling …

Responsiveness

We haven't got a lot to say about the responsiveness of the ST1000.  Out of everything we timed--start-up, focus, saving a shot--noting was particularly bad or exceptionally good.

Image Quality

The 12 Megapixel sensor brings with it two old friends we've seen before: blocks of purple colour at 400 ISO and an attempt to combat noise with blurriness.  Detail is drowned out, and at 800 ISO, the blurriness is visible even on medium-sized prints.  On the full-size examples below, for instance, you can hardly see the numbers.  It's also clear that the automatic white balancing changes tack several times, no doubt with the aim of reducing the amount of visible noise in red areas.


The lens too behaves exactly as we'd expect a 5x periscopic zoom to.  It's accurate at the centre of the frame, but the corners lose out at every focal length, and big landscapes with lots of sky clearly show vignettes.  More unusually, barrel distortion is also visible at all focal lengths.  For a lens that doesn't even offer wide-angle (the minimum is a 35 mm equivalent) and which lets in such a stingy amount of light (f/3.6 is the best you get!), the least we would have expected was an even, accurate photo ...

Video


The ST1000 films in AVC, using an MP4 container and a resolution of 720p HD.  The results have plenty of detail, with a limited amount of noise, even in the shadows, and fluid movements.  The optical zoom is available and does its work quietly, unlike the continuous autofocus.  The mic input is neither good nor bad, and, overall, the ST100 does pretty well compared to other compact digital cameras that film.  Before it can take on the Panasonic TZ7, though, it'll need a decent stereo mic.