Samsung WB600 review

Packing a 15x zoom lens, the WB600 compact camera offers seriously good value

Samsung WB600
The Samsung WB600 has a whopping 15x zoom lens

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samsung wb600

When it comes to shooting stills, the WB600 is well worth the money.

We have our reservations about the lens' performance at its longer reaches, as corner softness is an issue, but for general long-lens photography this is a great little device for trips to the zoo or wildlife photographers who don't want to be weighed down by a DSLR.

We liked:

We're big fans of the WB600's manual mode. It's a great starter camera - use it on fully automatic mode for a few months, then gradually start employing its more serious features until you're ready for a DSLR. In the meantime, its still images are excellent, and the incredibly flexible lens should cover you for just about all photographic eventualities.

We disliked:

Long lens image quality isn't perfect and, at times, trawling through the menu system to reach relatively common features such as aperture size or exposure speed can be a tad slow. Another dial to quickly adjust settings would have been welcome, not least because it would have ensured that the WB600's useful manual modes were more than occasionally useful.

Verdict:

Performance is excellent, and if you can stand the low resolution images, the 6fps burst mode is better than just about any other compact we can name, and definitely faster than any low-end DSLRs.

The manual mode is an extremely attractive inclusion, and with the price hovering around the £190 mark the WB600 represents seriously good value.

Dave is a professional photographer whose work has appeared everywhere from National Geographic to the Guardian. Along the way he’s been commissioned to shoot zoo animals, luxury tech, the occasional car, countless headshots and the Northern Lights. As a videographer he’s filmed gorillas, talking heads, corporate events and the occasional penguin. He loves a good gadget but his favourite bit of kit (at the moment) is a Canon EOS T80 35mm film camera he picked up on eBay for £18.