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The Nikon Coolpix S6150 arrives just six months after the launch of the Coolpix S6100 and is near-identical in terms of specs. It's a point-and-shoot camera, with a 3-inch 460k-dot LCD touchscreen being used for the majority of operations.
Scene selection, playback and video recording still have their own dedicated buttons below the thumb grip, and this combination does speed up operation.
The responsiveness of the Nikon Coolpix S6100's touchscreen (or rather, the lack of it) has come in for some criticism, and there are still issues with the S6150's.
In terms of layout, it's well thought out, with controls separated into two distinct menus. A stab on the left of the screen brings up frequently changed functions, including flash mode and exposure compensation, with secondary features accessed by tapping the bottom of the screen.
We would have liked to have seen ISO appear in the quick adjustment menu, but that's nitpicking. The icons used to represent each function are clear and logically laid out, and it doesn't take long to memorise them.
However, the placement of the menu tabs at the edges of the screen can make it awkward for the sausage-fingered among us (and we include ourselves here) to access them cleanly at times. Nikon includes a plastic stylus in the box, and this does speed up the selection process significantly.
The lack of responsiveness is particularly frustrating when you're stroking the screen to browse your pictures during playback. Perhaps we've been spoiled by the feather-light finesse of the Apple iPhone's interface, but if you're going to rely on a touchscreen for the majority of interactions, it needs to be slicker than what Nikon's offering here.
