Nikon Coolpix AW110 Preview

by Mike Tomkins
Posted 01/28/2013

With the Coolpix AW110, Nikon corrects an injustice. With cellphone connectivity ubiquitous, and tethering common, photographers everywhere want to get their photos off their cameras more quickly these days. If you were shooting with last year's Coolpix AW100, though, you were left fiddling with cables -- or worse still, transferring flash cards between camera and reader -- to get to your images. Sure, it was a rugged, go-anywhere camera for the outdoors type, but that doesn't mean you wanted to share those photos any less swiftly!

The Nikon Coolpix AW110 now features built-in Wi-Fi wireless networking connectivity. This allows you to quickly and easily transfer images and videos directly to compatible smart devices, using a free Wireless Mobile Adapter Utility application that's available for Android and iOS devices. And impressively, Wi-Fi networking has been added with barely any increase in the camera's size, although its weight has crept up by 0.6 ounces (15g).

And that increase in weight may well not be down to the Wi-Fi, because Nikon has taken an already-rugged camera and made it even more so. The AW100 could survive at snorkeling depths of up to 33 feet, and survive a five-foot drop, but the Nikon AW110 bests it on both fronts, and by quite some margin for the waterproofing. Forget your snorkeling gear -- you'll want scuba tanks to take full advantage of the AW110's 59 foot (18m) depth rating. And if you fumble the camera while you're getting into your scuba gear, it should now live through a 6.6 foot (2m) drop. And it's not just fans of water sports who'll benefit -- the Nikon AW110 is still freezeproof, to boot.

In other respects, the Nikon AW110 is mostly quite similar to its predecessor. It's still based around a 16.0 megapixel, backside-illuminated CMOS image sensor, for example, although its upper sensitivity limit of ISO 1,600 equivalent is, unfortunately, rather lower than the ISO 3,200 limit of the earlier camera. (The lower limit of ISO 125 is unchanged.) And the sensor still sits behind a 5x optical zoom lens whose equivalent focal length range remains the same at 28 to 140mm. Maximum aperture still starts from a rather dim f/3.9 at wide angle, and falls to f/4.8 at telephoto, and that Nikon has included Vibration Reduction to fight blur from camera shake.

On the rear panel is a new display. Its size is unchanged from that in the AW100, with a diagonal of three inches, but where the earlier camera used a standard LCD, the Nikon AW110 features an Organic LED panel. Compared to standard LCDs, OLED screens typically offer better viewing angles, better contrast with deeper blacks, and greater saturation. They can also bring a worthwhile savings in battery life, because they don't need a backlight. Instead, each pixel provides its own illumination, meaning that when a pixel is black -- as in many menu backgrounds -- it consumes very little power. Total resolution of the new display is 614,000 dots, or around 205,000 pixels.

The Nikon AW110 still includes a built-in GPS receiver, allowing it to automatically geotag images with the location at which they were captured. That is great news for outdoor types, making it easy to find your shots by location, and even to retrace your footsteps through a day's shooting. While there still looks to be a hump on the camera's top deck for the GPS antenna, it's now integrated into the hump around the lens, and looks cleaner as a result. (And on the angular bodies typical of rugged cameras, the bulge for the antenna looks less out of place to start with.)

On the front panel of the Nikon Coolpix AW110 is a built-in flash strobe that helps put some light on your subject when ambient light isn't enough. We're currently awaiting detailed information on exposure modes, but we do know the AW110 also includes Nikon's Easy Auto mode and Smart Portrait system, so it should be easy even for beginners to get the shot they're after. Nikon has also included a selection of Special Effects functions that help get your creative juices flowing, and these don't apply only to stills -- you can also use them for videos.

The Coolpix AW110 shoots Full HD (1,920 x 1,080 pixel; Full HD) high-definition videos, and includes both a built-in stereo microphone, plus a dedicated video record button. Nikon has included USB 2.0 High-Speed data connectivity, supplementing the built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Images and movies are stored on Secure Digital cards, including the higher-capacity SDHC and SDXC types. There's also a not-very-generous 21MB of internal memory, enough for a few life-saving shots if you accidentally leave the house without a flash card, but you'll need to pick those shots carefully.

Power comes from a proprietary EN-EL12 lithium-ion rechargeable battery pack, and both battery and charger are included in the product bundle. Nikon says that the Coolpix AW110 will be capable of capturing 250 shots on a charge, unchanged from the earlier camera.

Available from February 2013, the Nikon Coolpix AW110 is priced at around US$350. Four body colors will be available: orange, black, camouflage (don't lose it!), and blue.