Nikon Coolpix S210 (blue)
Starting at: $219.00
CNET Editors' Review
CNET Editors' Rating
- Reviewed by: Lori Grunin
- Released on:
- Reviewed on:
The good: Small, sleek, and attractive; some nice features for the money.
The bad: Relatively slow; poor-to-average photo quality for its class.
The bottom line: Though it's stylish, affordable, and easy to use, the Nikon Coolpix S210 performance and photo quality aren't nearly as pretty.
With its supermodel-slim body and classy chassis--clad in jewel tones of brushed metallic blue, plum, bronze, and basic black--the Nikon Coolpix S210 will certainly make a style statement when you whip it out of whatever tiny pocket you've slipped it into. But as with its slightly more expensive and marginally slimmer-than-thou competitor, the Casio Exilim EX-S880, the performance and photo-quality trade-offs you make for high style and low price may not quite be worth it.
With its supermodel-slim body and classy chassis--clad in jewel tones of brushed metallic blue, plum, bronze, and basic black--the Nikon Coolpix S210 will certainly make a style statement when you whip it out of whatever tiny pocket you've slipped it into. But as with its slightly more expensive and marginally slimmer-than-thou competitor, the Casio Exilim EX-S880, the performance and photo-quality trade-offs you make for high style and low price may not quite be worth it.
The S210 uses the typical Nikon menu scheme, though better implemented than in the annoying Coolpix S600. A Mode button pops you into selecting among auto, Hi ISO (auto ISO up to 1600, compared with ISO 800 for normal auto ISO), Scene, Voice recording, Movie, and Setup modes. Menu calls up frequently accessed shooting options: image resolution, white balance, ISO sensitivity (Auto plus manual 64 through 2000), and color effects.
You'll also find the AF area mode options here, which include Center, Manual spot, Auto, and Face Priority, as well as the various drive-mode options: single, continuous, Best Shot Selector, Multi-shot 16 (16 successive shots in a single frame), Interval Timer, and Time-Lapse in movie-capture mode. The BSS can be quite useful--it shoots up to 10 photos as you hold the shutter down, then saves the sharpest of the bunch.
But you really don't want to shoot at higher than ISO 400 with this camera, so forget the high ISO mode. As with the S600, the face-priority AF is too slow, as well as too erratic, to take seriously, and as with most snapshot models, the auto area AF invariably picks the wrong subject. As usual, I recommend that you eschew all the fancy AF modes and instead use center AF, focus, and recompose. For selecting the appropriate subject, you're still faster than the camera. There's also D-Lighting, which can apply tonal corrections in-camera for those inevitable underexposed shots, but this feature works best on models that have better high-ISO performance; it unavoidably exacerbates noise. The camera lacks optical image stabilization, and electronic stabilizers are generally poor substitutes.
Unfortunately, the S210's performance is fairly sluggish. It wakes up and shoots in a reasonable amount of time--2 seconds--but its normal single and sequential (not burst) shooting performance trails both competitors and what we consider generally acceptable. It takes 0.9 second to focus and shoot under optimal conditions and 1.5 seconds in suboptimal circumstances; most snapshot cameras have gotten those times closer to 0.5 and 1 second, respectively. Firing two shots in a row takes 3.1 seconds, 3.4 seconds with flash, both of which are close to bottom-of-class performance. Oddly, continuous-shooting performance does OK, bursting at a rate of about 1.5 frames per second.
The LCD fares pretty well. At 2.5 inches, it's a bit small for a fashionista camera and a tiny bit smaller than the EX-S880's, but about as big as you could fit on this model and typical for the price. If you boost the brightness, it's adequately viewable in direct sunlight, though that will eat into the camera's 220 shot battery life (CIPA rating). But it's got a nice, wide viewing angle that delivers a good overhead shooting and group viewing experience.
Hide Review Senior Editor Lori Grunin has been covering digital imaging and all types of tech for two decades and photographing for four, but the stat she's proudest of is the approximately 5,000 photos she's taken of cats (and some dogs) for the animal rescue where she volunteers.
User Reviews
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Most recent user reviews
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"An excellent point and shoot camera!" By legitimate_kitty
Pros: -Clear, sharp, pictures
-A lot of scene modes
-Small and compact
-Bright display screen
-Long battery life
Cons: -Flash sometimes gets annoying
-The silver ring around the lens gets easily scratched
-Have to take out battery to charge
Summary: I got this camera for my birthday last year. And before I even get started on writing a review for this camera, I want to say my Nikon Coolpix S210 has inspired me to be more than your average joe photographer. Of course I wasn't bad before and I ... Expand full review
"Worst camera I ever bought" By alsopalinalso
Pros: Size (which makes it easy to lose..and that's a positive!)
Cons: Extremely slow performance, hard to use controls, battery life (30 shots), blurry pictures, poor zoom quality
Summary: This camera is a complete disaster. It takes forever to start up and you cannot take conitnuous pictures. It takes about 30 seconds to shoot one image. It is just slow, slow, slow. The controls seem counter intuitive and the battery life is terrible. The images I took were terrible ... Expand full review
Specifications
See full specsQuick Specs
- Digital camera type: Ultracompact
- Product Type: Digital camera - Compact
- Resolution: 8 megapixels
