The Nikon Coolpix S600 is a very small ultra-compact camera with a stabilized wide-angle lens, offering a 4X range from 28 to 112mm, in 35mm-equivalent terms. Up to last year, there was very little competition in terms of wide-angle ultra-compact digital cameras. Now, there is much more competition which the S600 has to face.

The Coolpix S600 turns out to be a camera with slightly above average image quality but slow performance in critical areas like shot-to-shot speeds and focusing. The user-interface and menu system are easy to navigate but strangely organized and require more button-presses than usual. Despite having a tiny battery, battery-life was good for a modern ultra-compact.

A direct and clearly superior competitor to the S600 is the recently-reviewed Fuji Finepix F100fd. It also features a wide-angle lens starting at 28mm plus a 12 megapixels sensor which delivers clean high-ISO images. Another recently reviewed contender is the extremely durable and even waterproof Olympus Stylus 1030SW. This one lags behind the Nikon S600 in terms of image quality but its the toughest digital camera to date.