Nikon 1 V3: A Pricey Mirrorless Camera That Acts Like A Point-And-Shoot

Nikon 1 V3: A Pricey Mirrorless Camera That Acts Like A Point-And-Shoot

Here’s Nikon’s new top interchangeable-lens compact. The Nikon 1 V3 is a mirrorless camera that hopes to break from the mould by being simpler than the rest.

Last year, the company completely redesigned the V2 , adding a more substantial grip to the V1’s point-and-shoot-like body. Now, Nikon is ditching that new design — sort of. The grip and electronic viewfinder will be an optional addition. But the basic camera will be a tiny rectangle familiar to anyone who has used a pocket camera before.

Additionally, the Nikon 1 V3 has a higher-resolution 18.4 megapixel CX format sensor compared to the V2’s 14.2-megapixel chip. The 1-inch CX format remains smaller than the sensors on micro four thirds cameras from Olympus and Panasonic, and much smaller than the APS-C sensors in Sony’s mirrorless monsters.

As before, the smaller sensor size and a powerful processing engine — this time an “Expeed 4A” — lets the camera do some fancy tricks that bigger cameras can’t, like shoot 2o frames-per-second. As you’d expect from a pricey consumer camera: built-in Wi-Fi powers and video recording at up to 1920 x 1080 at 60p.

The camera, with a 10-30mm lens, grip, and viewfinder will go on sale next month for $US1200 (Nikon Australia doesn’t quote prices, but it will come out on 17 April). Seems a little steep in light of the excellent sub-$1000 packages out there from Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic, but as always, we won’t know until we try it out.


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

It’s the most popular NBN speed in Australia for a reason. Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Gizmodo, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.