Nikon Coolpix S200 review

Thanks to the S200's disappointing lens, most photos appear at least slightly distorted. Both wide-angle and telephoto shots develop a small amount of barrel and pincushion distortion, respectively. Strangely enough, we found that the most distortion appears in the middle of the lens, between the wide-angle and zoom extremes.

To its credit, the S200 does some things right. For example, its automatic white balance does a very nice job of neutralizing colors in incandescent and fluorescent lighting, and its tungsten preset was able to cope with our tough tungsten studio lights. Plus, the camera did a decent job of balancing flash with ambient light sources.

The Nikon Coolpix S200 suffers from a bad case of style over substance. Its ultraslim, attractive metal body looks great sliding into your pocket. When you slide it out of your pocket and start shooting, though, its image-quality issues and slow low-light performance severely tarnish the pretty camera's shine.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Shutter lag (low light)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon PowerShot SD750

0.9 

1.6 

1 

0.5 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W80

1.4 

1.2 

1.8 

0.6 

Nikon Coolpix S200

2.6 

1.9 

1.7 

0.6 

Nikon Coolpix S500

2 

2.8 

2.9 

1.1