Good things do come in small packages. So is the case with Samsung VP-D795Wi. It uses MiniDV tapes as media and has enough features to keep a beginner quite busy in the world of videos.You may fall in love with it at the first sight, as it has some stunning looks complementing its black and silver body. It is probably one of the lightest camcorders that I have held too, weighing in at just a tad over 1 kg. It is quite comfortable to use as it fits nicely into the palm with all major controls falling easily to hand.

Samsung installed a good 26X zoom, and a 1.1 MP CCD which works pretty decently indoors as well as outdoors, with a maximum resolution of 1152x864 pixels for still pictures. The white balance and color quality of the image is good, which can be set as automatic or manual. Sporting a crisp and bright 2.7 inch widescreen LCD, which can rotate up to 290 degrees, shooting from any angle is a cinch. It also supports16:9 widescreen video recording.

On the bottom of the device, you'll find the SD/MMC card slot. Still images can only be stored on the memory card while videos remain the sole purview of the MiniDV tape. Samsung has also placed an array of buttons such as playback, record and a light button (to switch on the auxiliary LED light) on the left hand side. Strangely enough, the auxiliary LED light only works with the 4:3 aspect ratio and not with widescreen - I couldn't figure out why.

Printing still photos from a printer is child's play too, thanks to the PictBridge functionality. All you need to do is to connect the camcorder to the printer with the mini USB cable provided and then simply shoot a print command to get the prints.

I found a small glitch with the LCD of the device. There are no clips to lock the LCD in place when it's closed, so after a while, the LCD screen tends to become loose. But otherwise the camera is a great buy for new users who would want to click occasional pictures for e-mailing or record good quality videos.