Introduction

Samsung's new WB850F is a compact long-zoom that improves upon last year's WB750, and takes up residence ahead of their popular WB150F in the 2012 lineup. This is a so-called "Smart" camera, that's marketing-speak for "WiFi-enabled," which represents an emerging trend for compact cams, even though we're lukewarm on such applications. Another seat on the bandwagon is occupied by GPS, a 2012 addition and another late trend.

More interesting to us is the new lens, which now zooms in to a whopping 21x, and offers a slightly wider angle too. Yet as we've shown time and time again, extra zoom has a tendency to reduce image quality. Only our lab tests can decide whether this lens is better, or just bigger.