Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsDisappointed - Camera dead out of the box.
Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2017
Ok I ordered this in June after my AW130 broke while canoeing which replaced my AW100.
I received the product in mid-july while I was on the 14 day outdoor trip trip I needed the W300 for white water rafting. When I got home I had received my W300 and went to setup the new W300.
First charging the battery. There no external charging cradle like the AW100. This started with the AW130 and I hoped they would go back to the external cradle but such luck. No cradle means you have to open the camera and charge the battery while it is in the camera. So if you want to have extra batteries charged and ready when you need them. You need to charge them all in the camera or find an after market external charger.
Next the setup it was straight forward time and date and location. Then there was the linking of the camera to SnapBridge so you can have picture transfer from you camera to your smartphone and store them in NikonImageSpace. That worked ok. The key there is to press ok on the camera when you press pair on the app.
Now I get to where I've gone though the setup to take a test shot. Well the screen which is your view finders displays the photo information and things like battery life does not show anything but a black screen. I take a picture and all I see is a black screen.
I restored the factory settings and reran the camera setup. The W300 was still unable to take a picture. I loaded a memory card from my AW130 that had pictures on it and the W300 would display those pictures from the memory card. But when I went to take pictures with the W300 it would only take a picture of nothing (a totally black image).
I have now sent the W300 back to amazon for a replacement (Thank You Amazon can you get me a new one faster than 9/11/17 I leave for Costa Rica on 9/22/17) but the replacement won't come until after my high adventure trip in Costa Rica. So I'll have to go with my go pro session 4 (which isn't prefect either) and hope I get the shots I planed to take.
So far of the three nikon's I have had - The AW100, The AW130 and W300. The AW100 was the only one to do what was promised and last. I hoped the AW 130 would be better (It lasted a year) and then I placed my hopes on the w300 (which I also got the Amazon extended coverage because I didn't trust the W300 to last.)
So far I've missed my two biggest planned trips where I needed the camera. Thanks Nikon.
