Samsung NX Mini review

We’ll always applaud a camera manufacturer that pushes the boundaries, even if we don’t necessarily admire the camera itself. On that basis, Samsung is due for some riotous applause with the arrival of the NX Mini. It’s the world’s slimmest interchangeable-lens camera, measuring just 23mm in depth – or 35mm with its tiny kit lens attached. Weighing 229g for the camera and lens, it’s no bigger than a conventional compact camera, and less than half the weight of Samsung’s existing NX compact system cameras.

Samsung has achieved this by introducing a new lens mount. The Samsung NX-M mount is based around a 1in sensor – the same size that’s used in Nikon 1 cameras and the Sony RX100 III. That’s about a third the surface area of the APS-C sensors used in previous Samsung NX cameras, but four times larger than the 1/2.3in sensors in most compact cameras.

The Sony RX100 III showed how well this sensor size can perform, especially when it’s behind a wide-aperture zoom lens. The NX Mini’s 9mm kit lens can’t zoom, though, and its f/3.5 isn’t particularly bright. In fact, it captures a quarter as much light as the RX100 M3’s f/1.8 maximum aperture. There’s no optical stabilisation or filter thread and not even a lens cap – just a flat piece of glass on the front that’s easy enough to wipe clean. It seems fair to say that this lens is designed for compactness above all else. Its 24mm (35mm-equivalent) focal length gives a wide-angle view that wouldn’t be our first choice if we were only to have one lens on a camera.

Two other lenses have been announced, both of which are a little bigger and heavier but include optical stabilisation and more useful optical specifications. One has a 9-27mm focal length range, which equates to 24-73mm in 35mm-equivalent values. Its f/3.5-5.6 aperture is nothing special but its zoom and stabilisation make it more useful than the 9mm kit lens. We wonder how much the 9mm lens would get used by people who owned both. The 9-27mm  lens is expected to cost £200 inc VAT.

The other NX-M lens is a 17mm f/1.8, which is equivalent to 46mm f/5 on a full-frame camera. That’s good going for a camera and lens with a combined weight of 251g and just 50mm thick. With a suggested price of £160 inc VAT, the 17mm looks set to be the star of the line-up.

The camera itself is a stylish bit of kit, with an aluminium top plate and textured plastic in a choice of white, black, brown, pink or lime green finishes. Samsung has found room for an integrated flash and a battery with an impressive 650-shot capacity. It takes Micro SDXC cards, but with fast 16GB cards costing less than £10, it’s not much of a setback for those with a big stock of SDHC cards.

The slim design leaves little room for controls. Rather than a mode dial, there’s just a button that reveals the available modes on the screen. Thankfully, the 3in touchscreen keeps things moving along nicely. Tapping the on-screen Fn button reveals various key functions across the screen. Exposure-related settings can be adjusted simply by swiping the control. Tapping others presents various options to choose from. The touchscreen also makes it quick to move the autofocus point. The screen can fold up and over for self-portraits, whereupon a three-second self-timer function automatically kicks in.

Wi-Fi is built in, and with the help of NFC, we were up and running with our Nexus 4 phone in a matter of seconds. The remote viewfinder mode let us capture photos and videos from the app, although the live preview was disabled while recording. The app also includes full control over exposure settings, white balance, autofocus point and photo and video quality settings. Browsing and transfers of photos and videos is well implemented, with browsing in the connected device and automatic resizing to 2 megapixels. There’s also an option to send photos as soon as they’re captured, these are at the full 20-megapixel resolution and took about 10 seconds to transfer, during which time the camera was inoperable.

With Wi-Fi disabled, performance was much quicker. It took 0.8 seconds between shots in normal use, or 1.8 seconds in RAW mode. Autofocus was fast and reliable in most conditions, although it struggled in very low light. Continuous mode ran at 6fps, but slowed dramatically after 11 JEPGs or 4 RAW shots.

Samsung NX Mini image quality

It put in a strong performance in our image quality tests. Brightly lit scenes were captured with faithful colours and plenty of detail, with only a slight deterioration of focus towards the edges of frames. Processing RAW files in Lightroom 5 gave a boost to the fidelity of fine details, particularly in dense textures such as foliage. That’s true of virtually all cameras that can capture RAW files, but it’s particularly pertinent here because the NX Mini includes a copy of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 in the box.

^ Rich yet natural colours and plenty of detail, although close inspection reveals some of the grass texture has been lost to noise reduction (1/400s, f/8. ISO 160)

^ Processing RAW files in Lightroom 5 gives a welcome boost to fine details

Lightroom also helped to deliver the goods in low light, with print-quality photos at ISO 1600 and respectable snaps at 6400. The cameras’ JPEGs weren’t too shoddy either, holding it together at ISO 3200 – which happens to be the top speed used by the Auto mode.

Compared to other cameras with 1in sensors, it surpassed the Nikon 1 J4 with sharper fine details, particularly at fast ISO speeds. The NX Mini and Sony RX100 III were much closer, with very similar JPEG quality at slow ISO speeds. At ISO 3200 and above, the Samsung displayed smoother colours in brighter areas but its shadows were scruffier. This was for a given ISO speed, though – the Sony’s brighter lens meant it could easily outperform the Samsung in real world tests.

^ There’s little evidence of noise in these shaded skin tones at ISO 800, although the smooth gradients in the wall are less forgiving. (1/30s, f/3.5. ISO 800)

^ ISO 1600, and skin tones in JPEGs are beginning to look a bit scruffy. (1/30s, f/3.5. ISO 1600)

^ This ISO 3200 shot doesn’t stand up to scrutiny but it’s fine for snapshots shared at modest sizes. (1/20s, f/3.5. ISO 3200)

^ This subject matter is more forgiving to the heavy noise reduction. (1/20s, f/3.5. ISO 3200)

There’s no mechanical shutter, so the shutter speed depends on how long the sensor measures the incoming light for. This allows for shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000 seconds. The downside is that fast-moving subjects exhibit warped geometry – something known as rolling shutter effect. This is caused by the way CMOS sensors capture images from the top of the frame down. It was imperceptible in most of our test shots, but photos taken out of a moving train window looked pretty odd. We also noticed some strange bands of colour when shooting test shots under artificial lighting at fast shutter speeds, although this is less likely to be a problem in normal shooting conditions.

^ The electronic shutter means rolling shutter effect, warping the shape of fast-moving subjects such as this (supposedly) vertical pole to the left of the frame (1/250s, f/6.3, ISO 200)

Our video quality tests revealed crisp details, barely any noise in low light and a clean, full-bodied soundtrack. Autofocus was a tad skittish, though, and the tiny camera size and lack of stabilisation meant that handheld shots could be quite shaky.

Time to buy?

With such a wide range of CSCs currently competing for business, it takes a brave manufacturer to launch yet another mount. Samsung will need to back this up quickly with more NX-M lenses to convince people that it’s in for the long haul. The relatively small sensor should make it possible to produce powerful telephoto and macro lenses that aren’t excessively large or expensive. Then again, the NX Mini’s slim, point-and-shoot design might best appeal to the kind of photographer who is unlikely to buy such extras.

Take lens upgrades out of the equation, and the NX Mini and 9mm lens still deliver excellent image quality for such a slim camera. The fixed wide-angle view could be a source of frustration, but there’s enough detail in the 20-megapixel shots – in well-lit conditions at least – for some liberal cropping. Its lens can’t match the Sony RX100 III’s, but then again, the NX Mini doesn’t cost £700.

£300 is a great price for such a capable camera, especially when you factor in the £100 value of Lightroom 5. We’d like to see a few more lenses on the roadmap before we give it our unreserved praise, but it’s a promising start for the NX-M system.