Nikon D5600 review: Still a great slightly-more-than-cheap dSLR

Nikon sprinkles a tiny pinch of update dust on the D5600, a minor improvement to its small but excellent and inexpensive D5500 dSLR.

8.0

Nikon D5600

$800 at Walmart

$325 at Amazon

The Good

The Nikon D5600 delivers excellent photo quality for its price class, as well as performance that can keep up with your kids and pets.

The Bad

It may be too small for people with larger hands and it turns off the self-timer after every shot in single-shot mode.

The Bottom Line

Lightweight and compact with everything the family photographer needs, the Nikon D5600 maintains its position as a great general-purpose dSLR for its price class.

The camera comes in a few kits. Nikon typically charges $700 for the body (AU$1,100); the main kit with the AF-P 18-55mm lens is $800 (£800, AU$1,250); the main kit with the 18-140mm lens is $1,200 (£990); and for the two-lens kit with the AF-P 18-55mm VR and AF-P 70-300mm lenses, the price is $1,150 (AU$1,500). Note that the US kit offerings are a superset of those in the UK and Australia.

In addition to the hardware tweaks, though, Nikon finally updated its awful SnapBridge app (Android, iOS) at the end of November 2017, bringing its feature set up to par with other manufacturers' and ostensibly improving performance and stability.

For a camera with an APS-C-size sensor at $800 or less for the kit, the D5600 is your most well-rounded option. It delivers noticeably better photo quality than Canon competitors like the T7i, and while Pentax's K-70 is probably its closest competitor with a lot of feature perks (including a weather-resistant body), Pentax is sadly fading from view and possibly endangered. Its closest mirrorless competitor is the slightly more expensive but fast and compact Sony A6300. Micro Four Thirds models from Olympus and Panasonic at similar prices just don't deliver the photo quality of APS-C with their smaller Four Thirds sensors, although you can get better speed from the former.

A bit better

While there aren't that many significant changes in the camera over its predecessor, it does seem like there are small improvements in speed and photo quality. They're probably attributable to the usual firmware updates made when a new model comes out.

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The video looks good as well, and Nikon's autofocus in Live View smoother than before -- it's certainly better-than-adequate for general movie capture. Canon's Dual Pixel CMOS still outperforms it for smoother, more accurate autofocus during video, though.

The D5600 improves its single-shot autofocus over the D5500, and its continuous-shooting performance remains very good for its class (though the T7i tests at 6fps, there's no way to force it to autofocus to get a real result, so that's without AF). In practice, the tracking autofocus is kind of unreliable, frequently wandering off, but if you just use 9- or 21-area continuous AF you should be OK for most action, since the camera's not insanely fast, anyway. With those settings, it does a great job of ignoring things popping in between you and the subject.

You'll also experience some irregularity in the frame rate if the movement is challenging for the autofocus or autoexposure systems, but that's pretty common on the low end. If you want something with better, faster AF for action, you should think about spending a little more for the D7200; it's older, but that means the price has dropped and it's far more suited to action shooting.

Nice, with just a couple irritants 

Overall, the body design, like its predecessors and many of its competitors, is for people who won't be changing settings frequently. The only way to change basics like metering, white balance or ISO sensitivity -- unless you program the Fn button for one of them -- is through the back control panel.

Not much has been added to the feature set and by now it's got a more typical set of features for its price class. However, it still covers all the bases for a snapshooter, with a variety of filter effects, quiet shutter release (nice for school plays and sleeping babies) and the flip-and-twist display. It also has perks like interval shooting (though no in-camera time-lapse movie creation) and in-camera two-shot HDR which produces decent results and is faster than a lot of competitors.

The small size means it's got a small grip. Even the pinky on my medium-sized girl hands is forced to curl underneath the grip slightly. So big-handed folks may find their hands uncomfortably overshooting the grip on the bottom.

My one nitpick is Nikon's multiway navigation switch, which feels very flat and you have to really concentrate to not move in the wrong direction. A littler pickier nit: It still turns settings off after one shot when using modes like HDR and self-timer. If you use those often, I can guarantee you'll be grinding your teeth.

Worth the money

Like its predecessor, the D5600 strikes a solid balance between quality, speed and features for its price.