Gadget Gift Ideas For Everyone

2. Samsung TL225 Camera

Here are over 20 gift ideas for your tech-curious friends and family who don't know an overclocked PC from overcooked turkey. Happy Holidays!

Samsung TL225

I’ve reviewed a lot of cameras over the years, several of which were in the over $1,000 category. Never before have I experienced such an instantaneous, love-at-first-sight reaction to a point-and-shoot. Part of it was Samsung’s 3.5" touch screen LCD and the amazing user interface (UI) it sported. Having just reviewed some Canon and Fujifilm pocket cams with their traditional dials and directional pads, Samsung’s touch-based navigation was a little bit faster but a lot more fun to use. Some object to touch UIs because they can be too easy to accidentally press. Well, I know from first-hand experience that dials and pads can have the same problem. It’s all a matter of smart design and ergonomics, and I have no complaints. (Keep in mind that I’m 6' 0" with average-sized man-fingers. Other experiences may vary.) Samsung sweetens the affair by adding haptic feedback (vibration) whenever a control is pressed. I suspect this only adds incrementally to usage accuracy, but every little bit helps.

With 4.6X optical zoom and dual-image stabilization (in-lens and digital), Samsung tends to take sharper images than similar point-and-shoot options. Of course, if you sneeze in mid-exposure, nothing is going to help that. The stabilization helps most when shooting in video mode, which also looked surprisingly good at 720p and 30 frames per second (FPS) AVC. Note that the TL225's sensitive microphone automatically suspends while you’re shooting so as not to pick up the lens motor’s noise.

If this is your first experience with a full-featured digital camera, you might enjoy the filters and effects Samsung puts at your fingertips, everything from a “calm” photo style to rudimentary face retouching. Personally, I prefer to do all of these things in editing software on the PC, but they could come in handy if you want to use Samsung’s optional HDMI cable for output to a TV. What I find more extraordinary is the camera’s ability to leverage facial tracking and feature recognition and not take a picture when the subject’s eyes are closed. The TL225 also has a setting with which the shutter will fire as soon as the camera detects a smile on the subject’s face.

If the smile-detection feature isn’t amazing enough, check out the 1.5" LCD display set on the front of the camera. There’s a kid mode that plays a little cartoon on this screen to keep little ones focused for a few seconds on the camera. In timer-mode, the screen will count down with the numbers three, two, and one. But most of all, it’s handy for doing the old “hold the camera at arm’s length and point it back at yourself” (and whomever is beside you) for a self-portrait. With the front LCD, you always know that your framing is spot-on.

I was a little peeved that Samsung uses a proprietary USB cable, although this does get around the problem of needing to pull the battery out and charge it in a separate outlet charger. Lastly, Samsung opted to use Micro SD/SDHC memory cards for storage. I don’t know about you, but my fingers tend to be a little big and clumsy for something about half the size of a postage stamp. I would have preferred standard SDHC.

All that said, I can’t recommend this camera enough. At 12.2 megapixels, you’ve got plenty of resolution, great optical clarity, respectably accurate color reproduction, and a veritable mountain of manual settings to explore if and when your skill level gets to that point. You can give the TL225 as a gift, but rest assured you’ll be wishing you’d kept it for yourself. --William Van Winkle