No one’s going to fault the new Coolpix S5 and S6 for their looks. Both models take the thin, flat, rectangular camera concept and improve it to about as good as it’s going to get; to fit the larger 3x zoom Nikkor ED glass into the camera so it doesn’t protrude, Nikon’s designers have made that boring flat rectangle into a flowing all-metal wave-like design with a slight ripple on the left side to accommodate the lens. The only visual difference between the S5 and S6 is that the S6 has a larger LCD; functionally, the only difference is the S6’s WiFi capability.
The features are pretty decent – a 3-inch LCD screen in the S6 and a 2.5-inch screen in the S5, 6 megapixels of resolution, a 3x zoom, a fun new slide show feature called Pictmotion, an easy-to-use new jog dial selector and an improved Graphic User Interface (GUI). When both models go on sale in March, the S5 will list for $349.95 and the S6 will list for $449.95.
