Samsung PL170 Pro Reviews

The Samsung PL170's back and front LCD screen set up holds obvious appeal for both families with restless children and the narcissists out there. Take away that unique facility and you have a rather ordinary snapshot camera underneath, which to give this a positive spin at least makes for ease for use. Retrieving and replacing the fiddly microSD card is a pain however, and loses the PL170 half a star from our rating. Raising the PL170 slightly in our estimation are the inclusion of some fun digital effects filters, the fact that all the essentials are here, including HDMI output, and the likelihood most of the camera's intended point-and-shoot audience may well not be scrutinising the images that closely and be satisfied with what they're getting. Not terrible but not Samsung's finest hour either.

Strip away the dual screen functionality and the PL170 is hardly a game changer in terms of the rest of its feature set or its performance. If you don’t require two screens and are not something of a narcissist then, you may be better served elsewhere as Samsung appears to have rather over-egged the pudding in squeezing 16 megapixels on the PL170’s small-ish chip. However it is a fairly well built, in fairness it performs adequately (as long as conditions are ideal), and won’t set anyone looking for their latest pocket point and shoot back a great deal.

At first glance the images produced by the PL170 look great with excellent colour reproduction and are certainly going to look fine when sharing via sites such as Facebook and Flickr. When viewed at full size the images lack in detail and look blurred around the edges particularly when using the lens at its widest. If you are looking for a compact which makes creativity easy then the range of filters won't disappoint. The front screen is a nice idea and therefore self-portraits are easy.