Nikon Coolpix S5200 review

The S5200 is a point-and-shoot camera with Wi-Fi and a 6x zoom lens. That’s a little shorter than the 10x zooms in rivals such as the Canon Ixus 255 HS, Panasonic Lumix DMC-SZ9 and Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX200 – all of which we’ve reviewed over the last couple of months. However, Nikon’s camera is also a little cheaper.

There’s no sign of cost-cutting in its slim, stylish metal body or its 3in LCD screen. The lack of an orientation sensor is annoying, though – portrait-shaped photos must be rotated manually.

The controls are straightforward, with a dedicated button to access scene presets and another for exposure compensation. There’s no quick menu for other photographic options, but the main shooting menu only has eight entries so it’s easy to find the setting you want. This kind of camera is likely to be left on fully automatic settings, but the ability to move the autofocus point is an unexpected treat.

A Quick Effects function offers to apply a creative effect directly after capture, with 30 effects available such as Pop, Super vivid, Toy camera and Cross Process. This might appeal to some people but we found it an annoying distraction that got in the way of taking the next photo. After disabling it in the menu, shot-to-shot performance jumped from 3.8 to 0.8 seconds.

There are lots of continuous modes to choose from, including a 10fps mode that lasted for six frames, plus 1.5fps shooting that kept going for 17 frames before slowing to 1fps. Battery performance is worrying, though, quoted at 160 shots or just 25 minutes of video. Rival cameras manage 220 shots, and we criticised that for being too little. Using the Wi-Fi functions will reduce battery life even further.

These Wi-Fi functions are surprisingly hard to find. While other cameras have a dedicated Wi-Fi button, here it appears on the third page of the configuration menu. The Wi-Fi functions are less numerous than elsewhere, too, with communication limited to iOS and Android smartphones and tablets – there’s no option to transfer photos across a home Wi-Fi network to a PC or online services.

Browsing photos and videos on the camera via the Android app

We reckon smartphone support is far more useful, though. The remote control mode showed a responsive live preview in the app, although control is limited to the shutter release, zoom and self-timer. Full-resolution photos are transferred to the device directly after capture, which slows things down a little, but there’s an option to turn this off. Browsing the camera’s memory card from the app was a slick experience, with full-screen previews appearing quickly and the ability to transfer batches of photos. The Android app let us transfer videos as well as photos, but this wasn’t possible with the iOS app.

The 1080p video mode produced attractive results with plenty of detail, but the optical zoom was locked for the duration of clips. Autofocus was fixed by default, too, and enabling continuous autofocus peppered the soundtrack with tapping noises. These limitations used to be common, but the S5200’s rivals handle video more elegantly.

Photo quality was generally up to scratch, but here too, the S5200 lagged behind its rivals. Focus was sharp in the centre of frames but it trailed off slightly towards the edges. As usual for a 16-megapixel compact camera, noise-related problems were evident even in brightly lit shots. While bold details were handled well, subtler textures were obscured by noise reduction and smooth gradients looked a little grainy. These problems were mild in bright conditions, but the Canon Ixus 255 HS coped much better.

There’s plenty of crisp detail in these high-contrast textures…

…but the sky here looks a little grainy and the sea and sand have a textureless sheen

Colours are great here but focus is a little vague towards the corners, and there’s not much definition in the grass and distant treeline

Noise was more noticeable in dimly lit shots. Skin tones were grainy and textures such as hair and fabric lacked any definition. The combination of heavy noise reduction and digital sharpening left high-contrast lines looking spidery. We also found that automatic exposures in low light were rather unpredictable, sometimes using excessively slow shutter speeds that caused camera shake. Otherwise, low-light photos looked fine when resized for online sharing, but they fell short of the standards set by the Sony WX200 and Canon Ixus 255 HS.

There’s not a huge amount of detail in this shot but it’s good enough for resizing and sharing online. However, with a 1/13-second shutter speed, most of the photos in this batch suffered from camera shake or subject motion blur

The S5200 has an attractive combination of features and a great price. For us, though, the Canon Ixus 255 HS or Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-WX200 are well worth spending a little extra on, with their longer battery life, more capable video modes and superior image quality.