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The W700 feels solid enough and appears well built, even the lockable battery port door is very tough and has no flex in it. There's also a small flip door to protect the USB and HDMI ports on the side of the camera, not a bendy rubber door - which is nice.
Thanks to its long lens, the W700 is also noticeably larger than Samsung's other compact cameras.
On the bottom, we're happy to see a metal tripod bush as this is generally the mark of a camera that's higher in the market placing than ones with a plastic version.
There's a small grip on the front of the W700 that fits to the fingers nicely and makes one handed shooting comfortable. The only time we ever had trouble holding the camera steady one-handed was at the maximum 18x optical zoom, but fortunately the impact of the optical image stabiliser is visible on screen when the shutter release button is half pressed.
We have a slight issue with the shutter release button. Normally this would have a failry obvious halfway point to lock focus on a subject, but with the WB700, it feels like there's another mark before the halfway one. We found that sometimes we pressed the button down and it didn't lock because we hadn't reached the halfway point. Other times we pressed harder and inadvertently took a picture.
For a comparatively advanced camera, the W700 is surprisingly easy to use. We like the overall layout and design, the camera looks good enough to contend with similar offering from Nikon, Canon and Panasonic. It also has a nice feel to it and is comfortable to use. The screen is nice and bright and we love the futuristic look of the menu system.
