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Design and processing:
The NX300 is compared to the entry-level series NX1x00 much nobler therefore. Much of the front is covered with artificial leather, the top is made of brushed aluminum (?) Manufactured, works at least that. General notice that the NX300 thankfully is gratifying resistant to fingerprints and even with sweaty hands is still safe in your hands.
Although accustomed to much plastic is in particular on the back in the game, but all in all, the NX300 has a very high quality and can come up with a very good quality of workmanship. All parts fit together precisely, the buttons have a good tactile feedback. Only the "Zoom ring" on top could be a little tighter coordination tolerated.
The design is based on the predecessors of their own home and seems to have slowly found a solid design philosophy. Existing customers will be pleased, barely settling time is still needed. But even beginners will find their way quickly. In particular, the mode dial is limited to the bare minimum and were not overloaded with a number of scene modes. The reverse side is oriented with the directional pad, buttons for menu, exposure compensation, the image / video playback and deleting selbiger usual to the standards.
The 3-inch touch-screen can be tilted 90 ° upwards and 45 ° downwards bend, rotate or swivel outward, it is not, unfortunately. The image reproduction thanks to AMOLED technology in color reproduction at high levels, but the Pen-Tile Matrix ensures unfortunately for only average image sharpness and texture flickering on fine structures in the image preview.
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Image quality and autofocus:
20.3 megapixels on a CMOS sensor in APS-C-format represents the current state of the art (Canon 18 MP, Nikon 24 MP) and Samsung seems with the high pixel density not overwhelmed: Even with less ambient light, the images are still pleasing noise. The noise and the dynamic range is up to ISO 800 in the green zone, then it comes to the dynamic range relatively quickly downhill, the noise remains to about ISO 3200 at an acceptable level.
The autofocus is unfortunately, still a real drawback to the Samsung NX300. Although it has improved markedly compared to previous generations, but even in bright sunlight the camera takes in part to put properly over a second to focus, with less light and correspondingly less contrast in the image fails the autofocus then partly even completely. Tested both with the kit lens and the 60mm f / 2.8 Macro and the 45mm f / 1.8 (Portrait).
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Video mode:
Once again provides a manufacturer himself a leg in the success of his product. The video mode offers at first glance with 1080p50 / 60 a quite significant advantage over Canon and Nikon, but it has unfortunately decided against integrating a connection for an external microphone. Although Samsung has with the EM10 is a compulsory, external microphone for the hot shoe, semi-professional filmmakers but certainly this is insufficient.
A great pity, because especially the 50 to 60 images / s provides in FullHD resolution otherwise almost only Sony in the APS-C cameras. For the future, only the integration of a corresponding mini-jack connector is to be hoped.
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Conclusion and recommendation
Samsung makes the NX300 much better and properly, such as with the good 20.3-megapixel sensor, the high quality of workmanship and material selection or a video mode with up to 60 frames / s in Full HD resolution. An Adobe Lightroom license is also included - Nice! Unfortunately, one does also unnecessary Patzer: Autofocus is still too slow, particularly in low light. Even a connection for external microphones third party to "forget" is unfortunately less happy and the NX300 have good standing to face.
Given the still rather meager lens selection I would currently recommend rather for Canon EOS 600D or Nikon D3200, if you like it more compact and in the video wants a microphone port, the Canon EOS M should not ignore, though here the autofocus sometimes rather sluggish responds.
