Nikon Coolpix AW100

The Coolpix AW100 is Nikon's first waterproof, weatherproof camera. Designed to rival the likes of the Panasonic FT3 and Olympus TG-810, this snapper is waterproof to 10 metres and comes loaded with a 28 mm wide-angle lens. It's also equipped with a 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor, which is still pretty rare in waterproof compacts at this kind of price.

Handling

The Nikon Coolpix AW100 handles pretty much as expected. To withstand the pressure of being 10 metres underwater, you might expect this camera to be a big metal block like the Panasonic FT3 or the Olympus TG-810. However, in terms of its overall style and the materials used, this camera has a much more 'Nikon' feel to it—in other words, it's an all-plastic camera with a colourful front face and a plain black back. The buttons on the back of the camera look boxy and serious, and they're quite stiff to press. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as at least you won't end up pressing any buttons by accident (as with the TG-810) but, on the whole, they're not particularly pleasant to use.

Responsiveness

The AW100 has the same internal electronics as the Nikon S100, so it's not surprising to see similar performances in this field. Note, however, that the start-up time is much quicker, as you don't lose time sliding down a metal lens cover.


Photo-to-photo turnaround is within average and the autofocus is very fast in good light. It's much less effective in low light, however. Still, in spite of that slight weakness, the Nikon AW100 still manages to pull off a four-star score in this category.

Picture Quality

The Nikon AW100 has a 16-Megapixel BSI CMOS sensor and a 28-140 mm periscopic lens, which, on paper at least, makes this model a straight copy of the Nikon S100.
 

Sensitivity isn't amazing in this camera. Noise is kept under control up to 400 ISO, but at 800 ISO it becomes more of a problem. A strong smoothing effect kicks in to counteract the noise, and this is visible on 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm) pictures. This Nikon snapper is a far cry from the kind of quality we've seen in Sony cameras using a similar sensor (like the HX9V, for example).

Although the AW100 has the same lens as the S100, we noticed a few slight differences in quality. At wide-angle settings, the AW100 lens gives reasonably sharp results over the whole frame, performing better than the S100. Things are a little hazier towards the corners of the frame (but you'll barely notice it on an 8" x 10" print) and even more so at telephoto settings (but photo prints would still look fine). On the whole, we wouldn't recommend making prints any bigger than 8" x 10" (20 x 27 cm).


All in all, while it's not quite as good as the Panasonic FT3, the AW100 does a decent enough job.

Video

The Nikon AW100 films Full HD video at 30 frames per second. Picture quality is good, although videos tend to be under-exposed when shooting indoors. This makes the picture look dark and very dense, and can make dark areas of the image flood together in black clumps.

The AW100 records stereo sound but this lacks fidelity and the little microphones are prone to echoes and reverberation. Plus, when filming very quiet scenes, there's a continuous hissing sound in the background. This isn't noticeable in environments with even a low level of background noise but other sounds tend to be muffled.