The Nikon Coolpix B600 ($329.95) is a small camera with a lot of zoom power—60x to be precise.
It gets there by using a smartphone-sized image sensor and a relatively dim aperture lens, and keeps size and price down by omitting useful features like a tilting LCD and EVF.
For the money, we recommend the Panasonic FZ80 more highly—it's a little big larger, but also sports a 60x zoom and adds a good EVF.
Small Body, Huge Zoom
The B600 isn't quite pocket-friendly—we've seen slim models with 40x power lenses, but never anything longer.
It is small enough, though, to slip into a small messenger bag or purse without a problem.
It measures 3.2 by 4.8 by 3.9 inches (HWD) and weighs about 1.1 pound.
It's a little smaller than the FZ80, which is small for a bridge model with an EVF—3.7 by 5.1 by 4.7 inches and 1.4 pounds.
The lens offers 60x of zoom power, starting at a 24mm wide angle and reaching a 1,440mm (35mm full-frame equivalent.
It's a lot of power.
The red-winged blackbird is a tiny black dot on a reed in the wide-angle view above—I drew a red box around it in Photoshop to show its location—but is prominent in the uncropped 1,440mm shot below, taken from the same vantage point.
Now, just having a lot of zoom power doesn't mean you'll automatically get great shots at a distance.
Ergonomics come into play too.
The B600 has a good-sized handgrip, so it is comfortable to hold.
However, the lack of an EVF does make it a little harder to hold steady at maximum zoom.
Optical stabilization helps, but I still ended up with blur from camera shake if I didn't take care to brace myself before pressing the shutter button.
Finding a target at maximum zoom can also be a challenge.
Thankfully Nikon does include a framing assist function, now commonplace on bridge models with huge zoom power.
Hold the button on the side of the lens and it will zoom out slightly, showing a tighter frame line around your previous focal length setting.
It's a useful tool if you're trying to hone the lens squarely on a distant subject.
There are two zoom controls—one on the left of the lens, next to the framing assist button, and another around the shutter release, positioned at the top of the handgrip.
The only other controls up top are the On/Off button and Mode dial.
The pop-up flash is on the top as well; it's mounted on a hinge and is raised and lowered manually.
Rear controls include Record, which is toward the top right, in between the thumb rest and LCD.
A four-way directional pad, flanked by four buttons (Display, Play, Menu, Delete), sits below the thumb rest.
It has an OK button at its center and directional presses set the flash output, adjust EV compensation, switch to macro focus mode, and set the self-timer.
If you're a casual snapper, you won't miss the lack of traditional exposure modes, but more committed photographers are going to be bummed about the lack of the traditional PASM dial settings.
The only way to adjust exposure is via EV compensation—the B600 doesn't support manual aperture, shutter, or ISO adjustment.
Instead, if you want to capture a shot with a short shutter speed, you need to switch to Sports mode; it also turns on burst shooting, which isn't available as an independent setting.
Photographers who wish to stray from automatic will have to settle for various scene modes.
The basics are all there—portrait, landscape, beach, snow, indoors, fireworks, close-up, food, sunset, and the like.
There are also some more advanced options like an in-camera panorama mode and multi-exposure settings for night shots with star or light trails.
The rear LCD is a quite good in quality.
It's 3 inches in size with a 921k dot resolution.
It lags behind others in brightness—it doesn't have dots for luminosity like some LCDs—but I was able to frame up shots on bright days, even if I had to occasionally shield the screen with my hand.
You can increase the brightness (it has five levels to choose from)—you just have to dive into the menu to do so.
You can also toggle a helpful framing grid assist via the menu.
It splits the frame into nine squares using on-screen lines as a compositional aid.
A tilting display, like the one Nikon includes on the similar B500 ($299.95), would have been welcome.
Likewise, touch support is absent, which is just odd for a device that's squarely consumer focused—it seems weird not to be able to tap on a subject to set focus or to swipe through shots during playback.
Power and Connectivity
The B600 supports in-camera charging via its micro USB port.
Nikon includes an AC adapter and cable to plug the camera into a wall, but no method of charging the battery outside the body.
If it's something you want to do, an external charger is another $37.95 and a spare EN-EL12 battery costs the same.
The B600 is rated for 280 shots per CIPA testing standards, so it should get you through most days on a charge, depending on how heavily you use the wireless transfer feature.
In-camera charging offers the option of topping off the battery on the go.
Along with micro HDMI, the micro USB port is the only connector on the body; both are on the right side.
The memory card and battery load in the bottom.
The card format is SD, standard in point-and-shoots, and the B600 also works with newer SDHC and SDXC cards, although it doesn't take advantage of UHS-II speeds.
Don't fret, though, as the camera doesn't shoot files big enough to require the faster speeds offered by newer formats.
Nikon calls its wireless system SnapBridge, and it's included in the B600.
The camera sports both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
The SnapBridge app, a free download for Android or iOS, is required for operation.
It's quick and easy to set up, though you should have some patience as it does take more than a handful of seconds for the two devices to start talking to each other for initial setup.
If your app is stuck in the "Select An Accessory" screen with no options, give it a minute and the B600 should appear.
The SnapBridge app can download downsized (2MP) JPGs via Bluetooth in the background if you turn Auto Download on.
It's useful if you want to be able to Instagram or Facebook all of your vacation shots, while you're still on vacation.
You can transfer full size, 16MP JPGs wirelessly, but you'll need to connect via Wi-Fi and manually select the images you want to copy to your phone.
Autofocus Speed and Performance
The B600 is not a camera to reach for when photographing action.
Its autofocus system is fine for things standing still, or not moving around too fast, but this is not the camera to bring to a pro sporting event or to try and capture action shots of active wildlife.
That said, it's not a dog either.
It starts and shoots in about a second, locks focus at the wide angle in about 0.05-second, and at its telephoto extreme in about 0.15-second.
But the focus system comes into play—there's no way to manually select a focus area in many modes, so you're really left to the camera deciding what to focus on.
In many situations it does a decent job, but there are practical reasons to opt for a more refined focus point.
See How We Test Digital Cameras
Scene modes come into play here.
If you switch to the Sports position on the dial the camera swaps to a small, central area of focus.
You'll need to take care to place it over your target.
The smaller focus area does slow the camera down a little bit—at 24mm it locks focus in about 0.1-second in Sports mode and in 0.2-second at 1,440mm.
You're locked into Burst shooting in Sports, but if you prefer the smaller focus area and Single release, you can dive into the menu and select the Bird Watching scene from the list.
Sports, directly accessible via the Mode Dial, is easier to get in and out of.
Bursts are captured at a speedy 9.4fps, but you're limited to just seven shots at a time, and the camera is unresponsive for about 9 seconds after capture as images are committed to memory.
Image and Video Quality
The B600 manages its stunning 60x zoom range by making some sacrifices other cameras don't.
Its lens is an f/3.3-6.5 that captures a lot less light than the Panasonic FZ300, which retains an f/2.8 f-stop through its more modest 24x (25-600mm) zoom range.
Likewise, the sensor size is 1/2.3-inch, the same type used in most smartphones.
There are premium bridge models which put more distance between smartphones in terms of absolute image quality, but they cost more.
One example, the Sony RX10 IV sports a sensor four times as large as the B600, a 24-600mm f/2.4-4 zoom lens, and very advanced autofocus, but it sells for about $1,700.
The B600 doesn't offer any sort of manual ISO control.
Its sensor is, in theory, capable of ranging from ISO 125 up through ISO 6400, but the camera never moved beyond ISO 1600 in our tests, even when photographing our test scene in very dim conditions.
At its lowest ISO the camera is at its best.
Fine lines are crisp and while the small sensor isn't capable of resolving the tiniest details in our test scene, it does a good job compared with others in its class.
The camera moves to higher settings when light gets low, or when the lens zooms in and doesn't project as bright an image on the sensor as it does at wide angles.
In daylight I had it go as high as ISO 400 in a shady area.
The camera has already lost a little bit of image quality there, with sharp lines giving way to the slight smudging caused by moderate in-camera noise reduction.
The effect is exacerbated at ISO 800, and images made at ISO 1600 don't look good on a pixel level.
That's expected for this type of sensor.
You can see crops from our ISO test scene in the gallery that goes along with this review.
The lens does deliver sharp results, netting 2,217 lines on a center-weighted test.
It's a very good mark for a 16MP camera with a 1/2.3-inch sensor.
There is a bit of loss of quality toward the edge of the frame—resolution drops to 1,770 lines at the edges, which is a little soft.
But it's an issue that is apparent in almost every camera of this type at the widest angle.
Zooming to 50mm position drops the maximum f-stop to f/4, but the lens is still quite good.
It shows 2,480 lines, with strong performance from center to edge.
We see good results at 150mm f/5.2 (2,259 lines) and 270mm (2,162 lines).
There's a big drop in quality at longer zoom settings; we also tested at 500mm f/5.6 and got good results (2,015 lines), but the camera delivers noticeably soft images at the longest focal length we were able to test in the lab, 900mm, where the resolution drops all the way to 1,351 lines—noticeably less than the 1,800 we want to see from a point-and-shoot like this one.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP4eFQ_4kHY[/embed]
The B600 records 1080p video at 30fps.
It also supports lower quality 1080i at 60fps, 720p and 480p at 30fps.
There are two levels of slow-motion—quarter-speed at 480p or half-speed at 1080p.
We found wind noise to be an issue when recording outdoors, and of course there's no way to connect an external microphone.
The stabilization system does as good as job as you can expect, but handheld footage shot toward the long end of the zoom shows visible shake—with such an extreme telephoto focal length, that's unavoidable.
Sacrifices for Size
Bridge cameras fill a real need in the photographic market.
Big zoom ranges can tackle a wide variety of subjects, from landscapes to architecture to macro to wildlife.
They don't (typically) do a great job in low light, but you can always reach into your pocket and grab your smartphone if you want a flash-free low-light snapshot.
The Nikon Coolpix B600 certainly delivers on the promise of zoom—its 60x lens is one of the longest we've seen in a bridge camera this small.
But it sacrifices some useful features—notably a tilting display and eye-level EVF—which would make the zoom power a little more easy to use, from an ergonomic perspective.
The lack of manual shooting exposure controls makes the B600 a complete non-starter for serious photographers.
If you know your way around an SLR, you'll be frustrated.
But it also limits the ability to use the B600 as a learning tool.
In this price range, we like the Panasonic FZ80 more.
It has an EVF, covers a wider angle of view, and supports 4K video.
It costs a little more ($400), but does go on sale from time to time.
Our Editors' Choice model, the Canon PowerShot SX70 HS, is in a different class at $550, but worth thinking about if you can spare the extra cash.
Pros
View MoreThe Bottom Line
The Nikon Coolpix B600 promises a ton of zoom for not a lot of money, but at the cost of useful features that are worth spending a bit more for.
