This camera is rubbish

You think to yourself, «my daughter will love this». Especially now it’s in pink. And it’s so cheap! It’s just above the minimum order value. Perfect. Just like that, order complete.

Don’t do it.

Just because your child’s still young doesn’t mean that you should give them all kinds of crap. And just because the camera doesn’t cost much, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about a bad buy. Every electronic device requires energy and raw materials when it’s produced. And AgfaPhoto DC5200 is a complete waste of resources.

Test report reloaded

I already tested the AgfaPhoto DC5200 three years ago. The result was clear: this camera is horrible in every conceivable way. Usually, devices this bad disappear from the market quickly – and often with an apology from the manufacturer.

Yet the opposite happened. The AgfaPhoto DC5200 is number 1 in our store in the sales ranking of all cameras.

I therefore feel compelled to publish another test report on the same device. And I’m a little less diplomatic now.

Every single image is blurred

The camera has 21 megapixels. It’s a joke. The resolution is worse than my Nokia phone with 3.2 megapixels. I can still read the text on the test screen on that. Not on the AgfaPhoto though.

This is what the image looks like with a compact camera that actually has 20 megapixels.

The resolution gets even worse when you zoom in because the camera doesn’t have a zoom lens and just shows a section. The result is the same as if you were to crop the image afterwards.

You can’t focus the camera manually nor does it do it automatically. It has a fixed focus. So it’s impossible to take close-ups, like photos of flowers. Since the camera only takes blurred pictures anyway, you can’t really notice. In the test images above, the distance should be large enough, but it’s still blurry.

Of course, the camera struggles when the light varies in the shot. As soon as a surface is remotely reflective, it’s overexposed. The colours aren’t right either, grey turns to blue in the shade.

Nothing about this device is good

The AgfaPhoto DC5200 records videos in 720p. But you can’t hear the sound when you play it on the camera because it doesn’t have a speaker. It jerks when zooming, and also when you’re not zooming, as the supposed image stabiliser is ineffective. And the rolling shutter effect is extreme.

The menus are horrendous. I can select resolutions up to 21 megapixels, or even a higher JPEG quality, but none of this makes any difference. Face detection can be switched on and off but what’s the point if the camera doesn’t have autofocus? In mute mode, «on» and «off» are reversed. If it’s on, the device beeps every time you press a damn button, even when zooming. If the camera’s in playback mode, nothing happens when I press the shutter button.

For the price of the camera the finish is terrible. The colour peels off after a few days, but even fresh out of the packaging it has unsightly manufacturing defects.

Can it even be called a camera?

No focus, digital zoom only, extremely blurred – all reminiscent of the phone cameras from the noughties. And the lens of the AgfaPhoto DC5200 really does look like that of a mobile phone. The lens itself is only the innermost, tiny part – everything around it is just plastic rings.

A thin plastic film is stretched over it.

And the killer argument «but it’s pink, omg!!!». I wouldn’t call this «pink» – it’s more of a raw meat colour.