Samsung's NX500 is stylish, compact and capable

If you liked the sound of Samsung's NX1 camera last year, which delivered 28-megapixel stills alongside 4K video, how about its stylish new sibling, the NX500? It looks a whole lot more desirable, but the specifications inside haven't actually changed all that much: you'll find the same APS-C sensor, flippable AMOLED display, an ISO range up to 51,200 and a heavy serving of connectivity options including WiFi, NFC and Bluetooth. Inside the NX500, you'll also find a new DRIMeV imaging processor, which Samsung reckons is much faster than the predecessor -- and should result in better images in a lot of ways.

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Thanks to the new chip, we're also promised better color reproduction, better noise reduction and heck, better image quality. However, barring the quality of the images themselves, the NX500 delivers and all-round more attractive look compared to the NX1. Better ergonomically shaped (and sized), the design steers at least slightly closer to something you might see from Fujifilm, and less like the nondescript DSLR body that Samsung's NX1 was housed inside. The camera will land in brown, black and white color options starting mid-March 2015. You'll need $799 to pick up the camera, which will also come with optical image-stabilizing 16-50, f3.5-f5.6 power-zoom lens -- which sounds good to us.

Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.