Samsung NV40-Test:

On paper the Samsung NV40 looks great: manual controls, Smart Touch and decent specs. And despite being less than a year old, this 10.5MP snapper has dropped in price to a staggeringly good £110. But how does it look in practice?

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Like the rest of the NV range, it looks good, although the silver color scheme is a bit boring. Thankfully, it also comes in black. The sleek lines, blue lens ring, and double-shoulder dials look great, but the ridge on the Front sacrifices effective support for aesthetics.

There are two control wheels on top of the NV40. On the right is the usual scene mode wheel, while on the left is a color options wheel, giving you quick access to settings like Retro, Forest, Cool, Calm and Classic .These are a bit frivolous; if a second wheel is begging, we would have preferred exposure compensation or something more useful.

On the back is a 64 mm (2.5-inch) LCD screen. Screen size is limited by the positioning of smart-touch controls. Running along the bottom and right side of the screen are a row of buttons that allow you to either pull up a horizontal or vertical list of shooting options, then press a button on the other axis to select the setting you want. Although intimidating at first glance, this is a clever, intuitive and fun way to control the camera .

Another clever touch is the NV40's USB connector. The USB cable for transferring images to your computer also plugs into the connector to charge the camera from the mains. This makes charging easy even if you don't have the charger , but it's a proprietary USB connection on the camera, so you can't use generic USB cables.

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The 37mm wide-angle, which is equivalent to a 35mm film camera, isn't anything special, but it has a longer-than-average 5x zoom lens. It also has optical image stabilization, which ensures that handheld shots produce sharper images and allow longer shutter speeds.

For darker conditions, the NV40 goes up to a maximum of ISO 3,200. Flash options include red-eye reduction or slow sync. This fires the flash but also uses a slower shutter speed, meaning your subjects won't be as are sharply illuminated and do not appear bleached out.

The buttons on the back of the camera are also touch-sensitive, giving access to our favorite aspect of Smart Touch: sliders. To change exposure, for example, you have to slide your finger across the row of buttons to move a slider. It might still be more intuitive than the thumbwheels on dSLRs, and the finishing touch is that moving the slider makes the icon sharper or blurrier to represent faster or faster shutter speeds.