Samsung GALAXY K zoom Review

The Galaxy K zoom follows last year's Galaxy S4 Zoom and adds 4G, an improved design and a better camera.

Chassis & screen

As with the previous version of this hybrid device, it's easier to think of the K zoom as a camera that thinks it's a phone rather than the other way round. As a phone it's bulky, with a large, extendible, optical lens that bulges out to 24mm in repose, and weighs a hefty 200g. It's lost the large, bulging battery grip but it's still not subtle, and not that easy to carry around, though if you're serious about your photography, and don't want to carry two devices, it's worth considering.



The 4.8-inch Super AMOLED screen delivers a resolution of 1,280x720p -- not quite full HD but it should still look a little sharper than it does. It actually appears a little fuzzy, more so than you'd expect from an LCD screen with these sort of specifications. Colours too seem a bit over-saturated and less than lifelike. All this seems a bit bizarre in a camera phone that prides itself on the quality of its pictures -- the screen simply doesn't do them justice.

Software & processor

Its running Android 4.4 KitKat but as usual has some tweaks from Samsung, including a redesigned (but very long) settings menu and alphabetical view of all your apps.



Unusually, the processor is a hexa-core model -- six cores in all -- with four cores handling the day-to-day functions and two more for more intensive tasks. It's backed by 2GB of RAM too, which comes in handy for keeping things running nice and smoothly. Our AnTuTu benchmark test delivered a score of 31,822 which puts it only a little behind top-ranked phones of the moment like the LG G3, OnePlus One or indeed the Galaxy S5.

Photography

And so to the camera, all 20.7 megapixels of it. That's a step up from the S4 Zoom's 16 megapixels and similar-sounding specifications to Sony's Xperia Z2. The difference of course is the optical lens, which is capable of zooming in much more efficiently than a standard digital zoom, which loses resolution the more you use it. It extends to 240mm at full stretch and offers 10x magnification -- you can also go up to 20x magnification using digital processing.



It can take pictures at a maximum resolution of 5,248x3,936 pixels and shoot video at an impressive full HD 1080p at 60fps. Picture quality is pretty good, but without the zoom, you could say that the Sony Xperia Z2, for instance, delivers equally good results. Use the zoom though, and it's instantly head and shoulders above its digital zoom rivals, with pics holding their sharpness even at full zoom.



Built-in camera apps include Studio, which lets you edit your pics and create collages. There's also Pro Suggest Market, which offers pre-set filters and options for your snapper. It comes with a reasonable 8GB of memory on board but you can add up to 64GB via microSD card, with the slot living under a cover on the side. Battery life was a disappointment however, and we found we barely got a full day of steady use out of it.

Conclusion

The Samsung Galaxy K zoom moves the concept on from its last incarnation with 4G connectivity and a beefed up camera spec, though it's now lost the bulge grip. It's still very much a low to midrange digital camera masquerading as a mid- to high-end mobile phone, but if you need a phone with a high-quality optical zoom, it doesn't have much competition at the moment.