Review: Nikon W300

After losing our AW130 last year, I waited until May to replace it with the Nikon W300 this year for the Shasta Trip, but didn't use it all that much during the trip, so waited until this past snorkeling trip to review it.

The image quality and other attributes of the device hasn't changed much between revisions --- the zoom range is identical, as is the resolution, etc. I would review all those aspects, since I mostly only notice what changes.

First, the UI seems to have degraded. It's no longer easy to switch scene modes, but the camera seems to do a good job of selecting which mode to use so I'm not going to gripe too much. What's impressive though is the wireless connectivity, which used to upload downgraded photos via the Nikon Camera app. Now, a new app has been tasked with this, and it's called Snapbridge. This connects to the camera via Bluetooth, and now downloads full resolution pictures to your phone without having to open up the camera and pulling out the SD card. Usually by the time we returned to the hotel from a snorkeling trip all the photos have uploaded to the phone and are ready for sharing.

I looked around for other waterproof cameras and none of them have the depth rating (100') that the Nikon has, and I've had very bad experiences with waterproof cases in the past, so this is still the camera I recommend for divers and snorkelers.