Nikon COOLPIX S230

Good ISO performance for its class The screen performs extremely bad in well-lit areas No options for manual settings

The Nikon COOLPIX S230 is another entry by Nikon in the budget camera section. The S230 comes with a 3 – inch touch screen which will make it an upper hand in its category because not many cameras of this range run on a touch screen interface. With the dimensions of 91 x 57 x 20 mm and weighing in at 115g, the s230 is compact and light. From front, the S230 shares its looks with the S570 and just like the S570 the plastic feels cheap. But the S230 does look a bit better than the S570 due to the brush metal finish on it.

The top of the camera is once again reminiscent of the S570, but the facing side is not same as the S570 because the S230 packs a 3- inch LCD screen, with anti– reflection coating and adjacent to it the scene selection and play button. Regardless of the touch functionality, the User Interface (UI) is pretty much similar to the S570’s UI. This is not entirely bad as I stated in the review for the S570, it is good for a low budget point and shoot camera.

The screen of the S230 is really bad. Strangely, the images look very grainy on the screen in broad daylight and if not that, it is almost impossible to preview the picture in a well–lit area. The S230 features a CCD sensor capable of taking pictures at 10 megapixels with 3x optical zoom. The images are not up to the mark as the colors are very saturated and due to this the image loses out on its clarity.

Though our ISO test the images were saturated it maintained a pleasant white balance and image clarity on lower ISO levels. ISO 800 onwards, the images are very noisy and lose out on sharpness. But the images are quite usable till ISO 400.

The Macro mode on the S230 has the same issues found on the S570. The camera fails to focus in a distance less than 3 inches. But the overall clarity of the images taken from the macro mode are crisp.

The Nikon COOLPIX S230 sells at a street price of Rs. 10,990 and delivers a less than mediocre performance. Though there might not be many digital cameras available in the market which feature a Touch screen and 10 megapixels for Rs 10,000, there are many more cameras at a similar price delivering better performance. With the ever growing digital camera market, the Nikon COOLPIX S230 fails to make a mark.

Specs
• Dimensions (WxHxD): 91 x 57 x 20 mm
• Weight: 115g
• LCD Display: 3" 230,000 dots TFT LCD with touch screen control and anti-reflection coating
• Sensor: CCD
• Resolution: 10 megapixels
• Aperture range: F3.1 – F5.9
• Shutter Speed: N/A
• Optical Zoom: 3x
• ISO sensitivity: Auto, 60, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 2000
• Flash: Auto, Red-Eye reduction, Off, On, Slow sync
• Self Timer: 3 or 10 sec
• Movie recording: VGA
• Storage: SD / SDHC card
• MOP: Rs 10,990