Updated 20 Jun, 2013, 1:21 pm IST

REVIEWS / CAMCORDERS / SAMSUNG INDIA

Samsung HMX-H200BP

07 May, 2010, 3:19 pm IST | by Sandeep Balachandran | Camcorders

The Samsung HMX-H200BP camcorder comes with a user-friendly design that makes everything from navigation to usability rather easy. For instance, it's free of the conventional rubber port flaps, and instead comes with a hardened plastic cover that effortlessly flips out when required. To make things easier, the camcorder features a simple dedicated button to help switch between video and image capture modes. Unlike most other camcorders, the HMX-H200BP allows you to focus on the subject before taking still images, thereby ensuring sharper results.

The camera features the usual swivel touch-screen with the quick menu, record, and zoom buttons placed alongside it. However, the screen feels a little too reflective when shooting under broad daylight. This particular model is devoid of a built-in hard drive and comes with just an SD card slot that supports a maximum of 32 GB. The camcorder offers video recording in three modes – standard definition, and high definition at 720p and 1080i. A 4 GB SD card will record a maximum of 30 minutes of video in its lowest mode, while in 720p and 1080i, you can just about squeeze in 10 minutes and 7 minutes respectively.

The HMX-H200BP also features a few extra scene modes, such as sport, portraits, beach/snow, food, candle light and indoor. Those who like to have the functionalities of a digital camera in their camcorder will like the option of manually adjusting the aperture and shutter speed in this camcorder. Through the interesting Touch Point Focus or the Magic Touch Shot feature, you can shift focus anywhere on the screen by simply touching that area of the LCD screen, allowing you to choose the subject that you would like to focus on rather than the whole picture.

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Also worth a mention is the Time Lapse recording feature, which, while useful, comes preset with 1/3/5 second intervals, so you cannot specify your own recording intervals. For some reason, we couldn't quite get the camcorder to save files in this mode. Every time the recording stopped, the files just seemed to vanish, but we'll put that down to the fact that the unit we reviewed was an engineering sample.

The overall video quality of the Samsung HMX-H200BP is impressive and it maintains a very good balance of color and contrast. Moreover, the camcorder performed equally well under broad daylight and under the shade, producing negligible fringing. The HMX-H200BP also does a decent enough job of capturing details in still images, but it still falls short of the kind of image quality you would get in a dedicated still image camera. The camcorder is also capable of taking great macro shots, as the minimum focus range is negligible. This means that even if your subject is close enough to touch the lens, it will still focus without a hitch.

The Samsung HMX-H200BP is a great camera with a features set to play around with, and very little to complain about in terms of performance. Since the review unit was an engineering sample, we haven't deduct points for its non-working Time Lapse mode. Even so, the HMX-H200BP does what a camcorder is built to do i.e. record videos, and it does it extremely well. At Rs. 20,990, this camcorder is well worth the price.

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