DxO ONE – Should you buy this camera for your iPhone?

If you want to capture DSLR-Like photos with your iPhone or iPad? An additional  $600 camera “DxO ONE” can help you with it

DxO, a company best known for their professional photo and film software as well as for rating image sensors, stepped into where they could stand right amongst the companies by introducing their first connected camera – called the DxO One. It directly connects to iPhone or iPad with a Lightning port.

In addition to United States, the DxO ONE is now planned to be available in Europe starting this October over their online store. The camera will be sold for £449 GBP in UK and for €599 EUR in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands and in Switzerland. This is hardly expected if the camera will be available to buy officially from Pakistan, however by other means it could make it to local online stores sooner or later if the consumers interest is seen.

It’s not something like first that snaps on to your smartphone and gives you the ability to have improved photos. We have seen photo accessories for the mobile phones which vary with the capabilities of their functions such as Moment’s lenses that only give a big eye to the existing iPhone’s camera.

There are also Sony’s QX-series – QX10 and QX100 or Olympus Air that are full fledged cameras only lacking a viewfinder but hangs-on to the smartphone with a compatible app providing full control over the add-on camera. DxO ONE is just like the later ones but comes in a compact little design connecting physically to a mobile phone and only supports Apple devices with the Lightning port.

The DxO ONE camera features a 1 inch BSI-CMOS sensor with 20.2 megapixels which is said to be as same as of Sony RX100 III. The 32mm equivalent, f/1.8 aspherical lens features six elements and variable aperture range from f/1.8 – f/11.

The camera offers DxO’s new SuperRAW mode which is composed of four Raw frames captured in quick succession. The DxO Connect companion software automatically merges the four images together using the very latest in spatial and temporal noise reduction, when the camera is connected to Mac or PC. The company has already claimed that the DxO ONE has achieved a score up to 85 on their proprietary DxOMark with its SuperRAW format.

Design and hardware of the DxO ONE is much commendable as It’s compact enough to fit in your front pocket. It just catches on to the bottom of the device with the Lightning port and gives the ability to camera swivels ±60°.  Well that gives it the ability to work for your selfies too.

With technical aspects, no wonder this connected camera is an amazing thing to work seamlessly with an iPhone or iPad.

But the thing is how does it actually worth. An Apple device like an iPhone which is already a market’s expensive smartphone amongst the various lot of manufacturers with a huge user base worldwide. Whether you like it or not, Apple’s iPhone or iPad attract most of the consumers out there hence bought by many too who can actually afford. Keeping exactly those consumers in mind, DxO ONE only was designed for them only.

It’s going to cost you not less than $599 or (PKR ~62,000/-) for the camera only. Combining both the DxO ONE and an iPhone 6 will make up the minimum price value of $1250 (or in Pakistan, PKR 1,30,000/-) That’s where you will think before spending your hard earned money on something or you will think about the better options you have otherwise.

Probably, it’s a good idea to target a specific market which fancy the gadgets like this one and would pay anything for it. It definitely is the best camera accessory, I’d recommend to buy if you are a photo enthusiast having a compatible iPhone already and want some serious results of the images you shoot around.

Hence I haven’t tested the camera itself, above recommendation is only based on the factors stated by the company itself.

DxO ONE Specifications

Compatibility

The DxO ONE is compatible with the devices having Lightning connector including iPhone 6 Plus, 6, 5s, 5c, 5, iPad Air 2, Air, mini 3, 2, or iPad (4th gen.) and also running iOS 8 or later.