Hands on: Samsung MultiView MV800
Samsung's latest snapper is adept at self-adulation
The MV800 is an innovative compact camera. You can flip up the rear screen through 180 degrees so that it sits above the lens – facing towards you. This makes the MV800 ideal for taking self-portraits – an activity much beloved by social media users everywhere.
It’s an evolution of Samsung’s 2View cameras, such as the Samsung ST550, with their dual front-and-back displays. The MV800’s advantage is that you get the 3.0in touchscreen whichever way you want to shoot.
It’s not only great for the narcissistic either, that tilting screen is great for shooting low to the ground, or you can turn the camera over and shoot above your head, and the pictures will still come out the right way up – in much the same way as the clever Samsung HMX-Q10 camcorder.
You can activate the shutter using a dedicated button on the rear of the camera – usually hidden behind the display – or by tapping on the touch screen itself. Despite the hinging screen it’ still compact at 92x56x18mm and weighs just just 121g (not including the battery). We found it easy and fun to use, and it feels very sturdy despite its hinged nature.
Samsung has included a number of fun features in the camera that match up with its portrait slant. There are numerous humorous frames, with translucent sections, which you add yourself into. Better still, you can take one photo, then use the touchscreen to ‘rub’ out the image as you please – creating a translucent section. You can then take a second photo and merge the two for interesting results.
The specification inside the camera is pretty typical for a compact camera these days. The smallish 1/2.3in CCD sensor packs in 16 megapixels, which leaves us with concerns about picture noise – as we saw a similar arrangement on the Samsung ST95 recently. The 5x optical zoom and optical image stabilisation is pretty much par for the course on a premium camcorder like this. Although the 720p, rather than 1080p, video is disappointing.
The MV800 will go on sale in mid-September with an RRP of £250, so you should be able to find it cheaper if you shop about online. It’s certainly not cheap, you can find similarly specified cameras for around £150, and we can’t say we’re impressed with the specification on paper, but its clever design should still find it fans.