Nikon D3300

                                                        Nikon D3300 

At better photo quality and slightly better performance, the Nikon D3300 delivers a modest improvement over its predecessor the D3200 -- enough to bump up its rating and improve its status relative to some competitors, but no so much that it's definitively worth the extra money over the D3200 for buyers on tight budgets. The rest of the updates, such as 1080/60p video, a redesigned beginner's Guide Mode, plus a slightly smaller, lighter body, barely move the needle. It retains the same 11-point autofocus system of its predecessor, and lacks built-in Wi-Fi; you still have to go dongle for that.

Image quality

Photos are the camera's strongest suit. The D3300 improves on the image quality of the D3200, with most images appearing somewhat sharper as you'd expect from the new 24-megapixel antialiasing-filter-free sensor, and the camera fares pretty compared to competitors. Also, for example, ISO 3200 JPEGs look a lot less noisy than their counterparts from the D3200, but the raw files seem to clean up about the same, pointing mostly to the inevitable improvements in Nikon's image processing over the past two years. JPEGs look very clean through ISO 400 and display only minimal artifacts through ISO 1600. Depending upon scene content the photos are usable through ISO 6400, but above that the less-bright colors become too desaturated and the tonal ranges compress unattractively.