Big is generally good: big house, big car, big snarling Rottweiler in the back yard? Err... okay, so not everything big is good. But what about a camera with a huge zoom lens and a whopping LCD? "Bring it on," we hear you cry.

Samsung has done just that with the Pro815. It's got the longest zoom range of any compact on the market and the biggest LCD at 3.5-inches across the corners - and let's not forget those 8 megapixels. This is quite a piece of kit and a good-looking camera too, although when you wind the zoom to its full 420mm extension it looks like Pinnocchio after telling a particularly fat porky. It's also well screwed together, if a little plasticky, but not enough to worry about.

The camera sits well in the hands and isn't as big as the lens suggests. There are front and back jog wheels for setting apertures and shutter speeds in Manual mode, and the buttons have an attractive gun-metal finish with functions embossed on them. These could have been filled with white paint to make them more visible in poor light.

Zoom, zoom, zoom

That 15x Schneider zoom lens is formidable. Zoom it manually from wide to telephoto and you'll end up optically in the middle of next week - or 420mm to be precise. This means you can close in on subjects that were once far out of reach. Unfortunately the Pro815 doesn't come with anti-shake technology, but the zoom alone will still attract many buyers.

This isn't purely a long story though - at the wide end of the zoom range there's a useful 28mm setting. The amount of barrelling is under control and when you turn on the Macro mode and focus down to 10cm you can create some abstract shots.

The Pro815's other big feature is the enormous 3.5-inch LCD that dominates the rear of the camera. It's fairly bright and remains so even on sunny days. It really shines after a day's shooting, where in the comfort of the car or back home, you can use it to edit your shots with ease. After using this one, most other LCDs will appear positively tiny by comparison.