Nikon Coolpix S600 review

Performance
Although it's one of the faster Coolpix S series cameras we've tested lately, the S600 nevertheless has some sluggish aspects to its performance. It starts up in a flash -- only 0.8 seconds. Individual frames focus and shoot pretty quickly, as well: 0.4 seconds where there's good contrast and 1.1 seconds when there isn't.

However, shooting two frames in a row takes a sluggish 2.1 seconds, about the same as the similarly pokey Canon Digital IXUS 80 IS but far slower than most other competitors. On occasion, an hourglass actually appeared on the screen. Flash shooting doesn't add much time to that: it only jumps to about 2.5 seconds, and actually comes out faster than most of its class.

The middling-for-its-market burst rate of 1.3 frames per second, disappointingly short battery life plus the slow typical shot-to-shot time drags down the S600's performance rating. 

Image quality
That said, the S600 produces photos that are generally better than its competitors. It does particularly well in outdoor shots, where it renders saturated, pleasing and accurate colours. Highlights do tend to blow out, though. For low-detail subject matter in sunlight, you can probably go as high as ISO 800 with little image degradation; in low light, we'd keep that to ISO 400 or lower. However, indoor shots tend to look somewhat overprocessed. There's some distortion, but not more than we expect from a wide-angle lens.

We don't recommend going above ISO 200 with the S600; but at ISO 400 you start to see noise and some smearing, and by ISO 800 the smaller details are almost completely broken down

Unfortunately, the S600's photos are almost universally just a smidge too soft, and there's no way to control sharpness. Though the camera provides a decent low bit-rate movie mode -- 30 frames per second VGA at 1.3MB/sec -- you can't zoom while recording, which greatly limits its usefulness, and we noticed odd exposure fluctuations during at least one of our clips. 

Conclusion
While the Nikon Coolpix S600 is pretty to look at, fun to hold and will frequently produce nice photos, disappointing aspects of its performance and operation keep it from getting higher marks.

Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday