Nikon Coolpix AW120

Pros Sharp 5x zoom lens. 24mm wide angle. 3-inch OLED display. Waterproof to 59 feet. Integrated Wi-Fi and GPS.

Cons Images are on the noisy side. No external charger included. Bottom Line With Wi-Fi, GPS, and an OLED display, the Nikon Coolpix AW120 is one of the better rugged compact cameras you can buy, but it's not quite an Editors' Choice.

By Jim Fisher The Nikon Coolpix AW120 ($349.95) looks a lot like the AW110 that that preceded it, but includes a few important upgrades that aren't easy to notice on first glance. The lens has been redesigned to cover a wider angle and capture more light, and there's a subtle change to the rear control pad. The 59-foot water depth rating remains the same, Wi-Fi and GPS are still on board, and the 16-megapixel resolution is the same. The AW120 is a good option if you're in the market for a rugged compact camera, but it can't quite touch our Editors' Choice, the Olympus Tough TG-3. The TG-3 features a lens that captures twice the light at its widest setting and a Microscope macro mode that make it a better buy at the same price as the AW120. 

Design and Features
Available in black, blue, orange, or woodland camouflage, the AW120, like most rugged models, places its lens in the upper corner of its body. The body is small enough to slide into your pocket with ease, measuring just 2.6 by 4.4 by 1 inches (HWD) and weighing in at 7.5 ounces. It's a little taller than one of the rare rugged compacts with its lens front and center, the Pentax WG-3 GPS (2.5 by 4.9 by 1.3 inches, 8.1 ounces). The WG-3 has a ring of LED lights around its centered lens for macro photography. The AW120 also has a LED light, but it's only used when recording video.

The lens is wider than the 28-140mm f/3.3-4.8 zoom that Nikon used in the AW110. The AW120 doesn't expand on a 5x zoom ratio, so its wider 24-120mm f/2.8-4.9 zoom doesn't quite reach as far at the telephoto end, but the wider angle cover is welcome. If you're shooting underwater the field of view of the lens is narrowed a bit due to the way that light moves through water, and the wider lens will let you get closer to your subjects and put more in frame—you'll get clearer photos with less water in between you and what you're shooting. The f/2.8 lens captures roughly 50 percent more light than the f/3.3 lens that the AW110 uses, but it's light-gathering capability is half that of the f/2 lens on the Olympus TG-3. When zoomed all the way in all three lenses reduce to f/4.8 or f/4.9, placing them on even footing.

There aren't a lot of controls on the top plate, just a Power button and a shutter release. The bulk of the buttons are located on the rear panel, to the right of the LCD, but there are also two buttons on the left side. One activates the World Map feature, and the other is the Action button. Pressing Action brings up an overlay menu that allows you to adjust the shooting mode, record a video, enter image playback mode, or view the World Map. It's designed for one-handed operation, so you can shake the camera to scroll through options, and use the Action button to confirm selections. The World Map works in conjunction with the GPS to show you a map of the area you are in and to highlight local landmark. You can also browse any area of the map, even if GPS is enabled or if you're interested in a location on the other side of the globe. 

The other controls are more traditional. There's a rocker with up/down action to zoom in and out and a Record button for video at the top right of the AW120's rear. There's a directional pad with four marked positions (Flash, Exposure Compensation, Macro, and Self-Timer) at its cardinal points, and four unmarked ordinal points. The diagonal button presses come in handy when scrolling through the World Map.

The standard menu, playback, and delete controls are housed on the rear panel, surrounding the 8-way directional pad. There is also a Scene button, which gives you access to the AW120's various shooting modes. By default it's set to Easy Auto, which wrests all control from your hands. There's also an Auto mode which gives you limited control over exposure settings, but there are no true manual, aperture priority, or shutter priority shooting modes available. Instead you'll have to rely one of the nearly two dozen Scene modes, including Sports, Snow, Close-Up, and Fireworks, to name a few, to best capture the world in front of the lens. You also get about a dozen art filters and a Smart Portrait mode.

The display is a 3-inch OLED panel with a 921k-dot resolution. It's bright, but I did find it a little difficult to see under direct sunlight. I like the punchy colors an OLED delivers, but it's not quite as easy to see as the LCD that Canon uses on the rugged PowerShot D30. The Nikon OLED is noticeably sharper, as the Canon D30's screen has a 460k-dot resolution.

The AW120 is rated to shoot 59 feet underwater, and while we weren't able to take it down that far, it survived being submerged in water without issue. It also handled a number of drops without incident, from as high as 6.6 feet, and it's rated for use in temperatures as low as 14°F. The Canon D30 is one of the few rugged compactst that's able to go significantly deeper under water—it's rated for depths of up to 82 feet.Both GPS and Wi-Fi are integrated here. The GPS module adds your location information to photos; it takes about a minute to lock onto a signal, but updated pretty quickly after that in my tests. You can transfer photos from the AW120 to an iOS or Android device using the free Nikon Wireless Mobile Utility app. The camera acts as a hotspot which you can connect to using your device, so you won't need to be near your home network to make it all work. Transferring images is easy, and you have the option of moving full-size, 1.5-megapixel, or 0.3-megapixel photos, and it only takes a few seconds to copy from camera to smartphone or tablet. The app also lets you use your mobile device as a remote viewfinder. The Live View feed is smooth and you can adjust the focal length of the lens and fire the shutter, but no other controls are available.

View the original article here