Samsung WB150 review

The Samsung WB700 had the same specifications, and the resulting image quality was disappointing. Thankfully, the WB150 marks a big improvement, with much less intrusive noise as the ISO speed went up. This seems to be as much down to improvements in noise-reduction processing as sensor design. Indoor shots taken using automatic settings weren’t excessively grainy, but noise reduction took a heavy toll on subtle details such as hair and skin textures, giving photos an airbrushed appearance.

Noise reduction has drained all the fine detail out of this photo, and still struggled to suppress noise – click to enlarge

Image quality in our outdoor tests was much better. It put in a solid performance at the wide-angle end of its zoom and delivered impressively sharp focus as we zoomed in, often capturing crisper details than rivals with bigger zoom ranges. The autofocus was sometimes slightly off the mark, though, and the slow shot-to-shot times made it more laborious to fire off a couple of shots for safety.

Outdoor photography is much better, although there’s still some evidence of noise reduction smearing details in these leaves – click to enlarge

If you can live with the 720p resolution, this isn’t a bad video camera. Pictures were as sharp as the resolution allows, the optical stabilisation kept shots steady when we zoomed in and the zoom motor didn’t interfere with the soundtrack. The autofocus was extremely reluctant to update while recording, though.

The WB150 doesn’t offer much to get excited about, but it’s keenly priced and takes attractive photos when there’s plenty of light, although it might be worth waiting for the arrival of the WB150F, which adds Wi-Fi and various networking tricks.