Labs

The NV11 is the successor to Samsung's NV10, which was reviewed in Labs, Shopper December 2006. We're delighted to see that the new model has a more powerful 5x zoom, a larger 2.7in screen and improved image quality rather than more megapixels, as is the case with most updated camera designs.

Samsung has ditched the usual five-way navigation pad in favour of 13 unmarked buttons that run along the bottom and right-hand side of the screen.

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These line up with onscreen icons, providing a quick way to adjust settings without delving into the menus. Priority and manual exposure modes are available, with good visual feedback to help choose settings. Face detection is included and, although its ability to spot faces was poor, it coped better than most at ignoring a strong backlight.

The NV11's performance is its biggest flaw. It took four-and-a-half seconds to switch on and capture a photo, and pressing the shutter button before the camera was ready caused it to take even longer. Autofocus was slow and often failed to lock on to nearby subjects, and there was a three-second gap between shots.

While the NV10 failed to live up to its 10-megapixel rating, the NV11 has no such problems, producing some of the most detailed shots here. It came top for colour accuracy, excelling at indoor shots both with and without the flash. But noise was fairly intrusive at ISO 400 and above, and the lack of image stabilisation means this isn't a camera for low-light photography.