Nikon D5500
Ultra-lightweight and compact, the D5500 is also the only camera in Nikon’s enthusiast range with a touch-sensitive LCD
Announced a couple of months before the D7200, in January 2015, the D5500 is the smallest and lightest camera on test. It’s slimmer than the D7200, and weighs just 470 grams.
At first glance, it doesn’t look like an ‘enthusiast’ SLR. Several features that you’d usually find on Nikon’s upmarket bodies are absent: there’s no top-panel info LCD, no sub-command dial in front of the shutter-release button, and no left-hand bank of control buttons at the rear. However, while these omissions would typically slow down the process of making creative adjustments to settings, the D5500 compensates with an intuitive touch-sensitive screen.
The D5500 is also the only camera on test on which the rear screen is fully articulated. It’s excellent for Live View shooting from creative angles, as well as for putting yourself in the picture for self-portraits. The lack of the left-hand rear button bank is a small price to pay.
Performance
The D5500 certainly isn’t small when it comes to megapixel count, where it pretty much matches all the other cameras in the group apart from the D810. Image quality is often a close match to that of the D7200, although metering sometimes errs on the bright side, making pictures look less rich. Image noise is controlled well at high ISOs, but at the expense of fine detail, especially when compared with the FX-format cameras in the group.