Geeky Traveller

Samsung’s L74 tries very hard to offer a built-in travel guide with its camera features. It’s set up to take group shots and panoramic landscapes, offers up 7MP photo quality, and a 3.6X optical zoom. It also boasts advanced shake reduction, 14 different scene modes, and 450MB of internal memory.

Unfortunately, the camera doesn’t get great reviews, including complaints that the surface is easily scratched and a touchscreen LCD that doesn’t always respond – slow response time is not something you want in a digital camera when you’re trying to catch shots quickly.

However, it is the built in tour guide that is the worst part. Of course, the idea itself is wonderful. It’s not as silly as it initially sounds. When we go on vacation, we tend to take cameras to capture the memories so why not have a tour guide that offers up tourist attractions of whatever city you’re visiting? Unfortunately, according to ChipChick, it’s more of a joke and less of a practical application. Their descriptions of attractions are vague at best, and mundane.

Considering the camera runs about $299, you would hope that both the camera and the software would be better than they are, but sadly that’s not the case.

I look forward to the next generation of built-in tour guides though – the idea is still great!

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