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The compact Nikon Coolpix S9300 is a good choice for anyone after a pure point-and-shoot experience and a long zoom lens. But, depending on needs, you might want to wait for a price drop.

While the Nikon Coolpix S9300 represents an excellent value and offers a nice point-and-shoot feature set, its photo quality is poor relative to the competition, with mediocre low light shooting and below-par battery life.

The Nikon S9300 is a serviceable camera, in that there’s nothing wrong with it per se, but it’s just not able to keep up with the steep curve of the competition.

When you remove the S9100's top-notch image quality and the decent battery life from the equation, however, the Coolpix S9300 becomes a far less commendable camera. If you can still find it, I recommend choosing the Coolpix S9100.

The Nikon Coolpix S9300 would be an almost ideal choice to replace an aging/broken/lost/stolen first digital camera, an excellent choice as a family camera, and a very good choice for travelers who want a small tough, easy to use digicam with lots of reach.

...Coolpix S9300 comes across as a lot of camera for an affordable price if a big zoom with a broad 25-450mm focal range yet pocket sized dimensions are your chief concern.

While the S9300's 18x optic is a little lacking in zoom power compared to its 20x rivals, the camera does distinguish itself in other areas – most notably with its high-speed shooting abilities. Sadly this is somewhat undone by image quality though, which isn’t as good as that produced by some...

The Nikon Coolpix S9300 will undoubtedly sell well, but it’s not the best option out there in this price range.

Nikon clearly knows how to make high quality cameras, but this effort to impress hapless shoppers with large megapixel ratings is a big disappointment, especially at this premium price.

Out of all this, we have to keep an eye on the price. At the start of the review the Nikon Coolpix S9300 was around £300 but since we finished, it's fallen to nearer £250. That's exactly the level we expected it to be at and we think for that price the Coolpix S9300 is a great camera.