Nikon CoolPix S230 review (plum)

Colors were natural with the exception of reds, which were a little more vibrant and would blowout some at higher ISOs. Also, the auto white balance was too warm; take the time to use the more accurate presets or the manual white balance option. Lastly, the lens has some barrel distortion, but it is effectively corrected by the camera's Distortion Control option. But, the lens also creates a fair amount of purple fringing in high-contrast areas, characteristic of this class of camera.

Though it's faster than its predecessor--the S210--the S230 is still fairly slow (as is a lot of its competition). This is most noticeable in the time to first shot: 3.5 seconds. The S230's shot-to-shot time averaged 3 seconds without flash and gets only slightly longer with flash at 3.3 seconds. Oddly enough, it has a very good burst speed at 1.6 frames per second. However, its shutter lag is at the high end of our acceptable range at 0.5 second in bright conditions and 1 second in dim.

In the end, the Nikon Coolpix S230 is a decent, good-looking, point-and-shoot ultracompact camera that happens to have the convenience of an intuitive touch-screen interface. If you're very critical of photo quality or need something very fast, this probably isn't the camera for you (there are other options). But if you're looking for a cool camera to keep with you at all times for snapshots, the S230 is worthy.

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

Time to first shot

Typical shot-to-shot time (flash)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim)

Shutter lag (typical)

Casio Exilim EX-Z250

2.8 

3.7 

3 

0.5 

0.3 

Canon PowerShot SD880 IS

1.2 

3.2 

1.9 

0.8 

0.4 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W150

1.9 

3.7 

1.5 

0.9 

0.4 

Nikon Coolpix S230

3.5 

3.3 

3 

1 

0.5 

Nikon Coolpix S210

2 

3.4 

3.1 

1.5 

0.9