Atomos Samurai Blade – new affordble disk recorder with 720p IPS panel

by Sebastian WöberApril 10^th, 2013

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Atomos updates the Samurai, their famous SDI harddisk recorder, and adds a high quality 720p lcd screen on top making it a true solution as a monitor / disk recorder combination.

We have checked out the Atomos products several times in the past as they offer an affordable solution to get more quality out of our large sensor cameras. These devices allow you to record the live hdmi or SDI feed from your camera directly into a high quality format, widely used Apple ProRes among others.

The Samurai and Ninja panels were upgraded before, but the quality of these monitoring solutions was still not high enough to be used in most shooting situations for accurate focusing, especially on outdoor scenes where the sun can be a lot brighter than most lcd’s.

Jeromy from Atomos showed us a pre-prdoduction version of the Blade that is said to finally offer a great screen.

“Blade introduces the SuperAtom IPS screen – super sharp, super bright, super blacks – right down to the last atom. At 325 dpi and a million pixels, this screen is spectacular. With full waveform functionality, the Blade is a monitor that records and a recorder that truly monitors. It’s the perfect partner for the new wave of cinematic cameras.”

Technical Specs
– 1280 x 720
– 5 inch touchscreen
– gamma, brightness and contrast control
– peaking, zebra, false color and blue-only, waveform
– as well as vectorscope and RGB/luma parade
– 10-bit 4:2:2 recording via SDI
– Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD codecs
– records to HDD or SSD drives

Pricing and Availability
Samurai Blade will ship in May 2013 with an MSRP of $1,295

Also with immediate effect, the price of the Atomos Samurai is reduced to $995.