Nikon Coolpix S1100pj review

Pico projectors are a great idea, enabling a handheld gadget to escape the confines of its dimensions and press a suitable surface into use as a spacious display. A digital camera’s LCD screen is fine for composing shots and making rough checks of new images, but the built in projector on the Nikon S1100pj means you can show them off to others too.

The projector’s 640×480 resolution is basic but it’s higher than the camera’s 460,000-dot LCD screen (if you’re wondering why the maths doesn’t add up, it’s because the 460,000 figure counts red, green and blue sub-pixels separately whereas the 640×480 resolution counts full-colour pixels).

The projector’s brightness is its main limitation. When held close to a wall to project a 3in image – the same size as the screen – it’s not much brighter than the LCD. Pulling back creates a larger but much dimmer image, although we found that in low household lighting it was still watchable at 20 inches across. Turning the lights off gave better contrast and let us project an even bigger image.

This is Nikon’s second projector-cum-camera, and the increased projector brightness, up from 10 lumens on the S1000pj (see What’s New, Shopper 266) https://www.expertreviews.com/uk/digital-cameras/276073/nikon-coolpix-s1000pj to 14 lumens is clearly welcome. It can also be used as a PC display, connecting to your laptop via USB. We’re not sure who would use this feature, though – as a laptop screen will always be brighter and sharper.

We’re happy to see a move to HD video recording; there was a hint of noise in outdoor clips and more than a hint indoors, but overall the quality was excellent. There’s also an orientation sensor so portrait-shaped shots are rotated during playback – an important feature for use with the projector.

Other changes are less welcome, however. Physical buttons have been abandoned in favour of a touchscreen, which we found much slower and more cumbersome to operate than a camera with conventional controls. It didn’t help that the touchscreen sometimes failed to respond, but a worse issue was that it sometimes took a couple of seconds to respond – or longer when browsing video clips. The result was that we’d repeatedly prod the screen to no avail, whereupon the camera would suddenly spring to life and respond as if we’d deliberately pressed the screen multiple times, overshooting the desired menu page or setting.

Our biggest gripe is the move to 14 megapixels. Even at the base speed of ISO 80, darker areas of photos were blotchy. High-contrast, clearly defined objects were rendered well but subtle textures such as skin and foliage lacked clarity and appeared a little grainy. Corner sharpness was poor and automatic exposures often used excessively long shutter speeds that resulted in blurry shots.

The combined camera and projector is an appealing idea but the S1100pj simply isn’t a good enough camera, especially at this price. If you’re really keen, then we recommend buying the older S1000pj, which is currently available for £180 from www.parkcameras.com.