The Nikon Coolpix P90 packs a 24x lens and a fair degree of manual control into an ultrazoom with a $400 price tag. .

The obvious standout feature of the P90 is its huge zoom lens range, which provides the equivalent of 26mm-624mm on a 35mm camera. That's a substantial wide-angle along with the fantastic telephoto capability. The P90 also comes jam packed with a high degree of photographic control, which we love. It offers program, aperture priority, shutter priority and full manual shooting modes. If you don't want to worry about all the settings, there are also 15 different scene modes, and two user customizable modes.

While the shooting controls are an important feature, we weren't too impressed by the breadth of each setting. For instance, while it's nice that the maximum aperture is f/2.8, the minimum is an underwhelming f/8. Likewise, the longest exposure time you can get out of the P90 is only 8 seconds, where other cameras can get up to 30, or even offer Bulb mode for unlimited length.

There are also a great many speed/timing modes. You can squeeze out 1.4 frames per second at full resolution; or up to 15 frames per second at reduced resolution. The camera will combine 16 quickly taken images into a grid, or use the interval timer to take photos at specified intervals. The inclusion of auto exposure bracketing is another nice touch.

Performance (read in-depth performance coverage at DigitalCameraInfo.com)
While the P90 had a good level of control, its performance in our lab tests was average to underwhelming. It did best in our color accuracy and noise level testing. On the downside, its lens created a large amount of distortion, and the images were soft. The stabilization system was apparently ineffective, and its full resolution burst speed was a letdown.

One of the major issues we had with this camera was its video mode. Not only is it stuck in standard 640x480 resolution, but almost all controls are stripped from the camera in video mode. That means no manual white balance, and a horrible color accuracy because of that. Combine the poor color score with the low sharpness due to standard definition, and the P90 loses a lot of credibility for those who care about movie mode.

Comparisons (read in-depth comparisons at DigitalCameraInfo.com)
In the P90's favor is its price; it's the least expensive of our tested ultrazooms, with a $400 price tag. We compared it to the Olympus SP-590UZ, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX1 and Canon PowerShot SX1. It narrowly won out over the Olympus, partly due to its lower cost, and a slight edge in testing. The Sony and Canon were both significantly more expensive than the Nikon, but handily outperformed it in just about every category, especially video, image stabilization and burst speed. The Sony also has some very interesting new features, including the ability to pan the camera while shooting images, and have them stitched automatically into a panorama. We found the Sony HX1 to be a particularly good balance between price and performance;  it's less expensive than the Canon, but scored higher than the Olympus and Nikon.