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The Nikon Z6 II has been my go-to camera for personal and professional work over the last two years, and it’s proved a superb all-round mirrorless camera that I’ve come to rely on for photo and video – but it might not be my go-to for much longer.
That's because I've just been briefed on the new Nikon Z6 III, with the briefing followed by a hands-on session capturing basketball players in action, and I immediately want the latest model instead.
Nikon has packed in several sizable upgrades that make the Z6 III one of the best hybrid mirrorless cameras available for the money – seemingly giving it the edge over impressive rivals like the Canon EOS R6 II and the due-for-an-upgrade Sony A7 IV, although I'll have to wait until I've put the Z6 III through TechRadar's intensive review process before passing a definitive verdict.
I've already written about the three improvements over the Z6 II that I wanted to see in its successor, and the Z6 III delivers on all counts, with better autofocus, faster performance, and design tweaks such as a vari-angle screen, plus it has a few surprising best-in-class features, especially for video.
The full-frame sensor has the same 24.5MP resolution as in the Z6 II, but this time it's a 'partially stacked' sensor with best-in-class sensor readout speeds, while the pricier Nikon Z8 and Z9 have faster-still stacked sensors. We'll unpack what a partially stacked sensor means in a full review, but in simple terms it's 3.5x quicker than the regular sensor in the Z6 II and has a better handle on rolling shutter distortion.
You also get the same autofocus performance as the Z8 and Z9, which is Nikon's best-ever autofocus, plus the latest subject detection autofocus options. When I took my Z6 II on a recent wildlife safari trip, I hankered for the improved autofocus system of the Z8 – I felt like the Z6 II's subject detection wasn't a patch on the Z8, and by extension now the Z6 III.
Autofocus is indeed one of the biggest improvements in Z6 III performance over the Z6 II. It proved sticky and responsive to the rigors of the basketball court. Autofocus is also sensitive down to -10EV, which makes it just about the best performing autofocus system in low light.
Continuous shooting is blazing fast: up to 60fps at full resolution for JPEG capture, with continuous autofocus and auto exposure. If you can live with the APS-C crop mode, that rate is upped to 120fps.
We also get better in-body image stablization (IBIS); the same 5-axis system as found in the Nikon Zf that gives up to 8-stops of stablization. I tend to find Nikon is a little optimistic with its calculations, and will check this performance during full review.
One neat IBIS trick is 'Focus Point VR' which pivots around your focus point rather than the center of the shot. Nikon says this mode can improve image stabilization performance by 1-stop.
A headline feature is the Z6 III's new EVF. It's Nikon's best-ever, with a 5.76m-dot display and 60fps refresh rate, offering 4000 nits of brightness and DCI-P3 color gamut. Nikon says it's the brightest EVF around with the most dynamic range – even better than the Z8 and Z9. It only took a second for me to notice the improvement.
Video specification is super impressive: 6K and oversampled 4K raw, in-camera up to 60fps, plus regular 4K 120fps. There's 10x slow motion up to 240fps in Full HD, plus Nikon's N-raw codec, ProRes Raw HQ, ProRes 422HQ / H.265, H.264 codecs in 12-bit raw and 10-bit log recording. Record time is an impressive 120 minutes and that's despite there being no cooling fan. All the above is all in-camera and mightily impressive, making the Z6 III a true hybrid camera.
Build quality remains largely the same as the Z6 II: the camera is 750g and weather-sealed to same standard as Z8, working down to -10 celsius. We get dual card slots: CFexpress B compatible with XQD, plus a SD UHS-II slot.
The body is slightly larger than the Z6 II and that's largely down to a chunkier and more comfortable hand grip. The Z6 III is still quite a bit smaller than the Z8. There's a new optional MB-N14 battery grip, that holds two extra batteries to triple battery life and has USB-C for charging.
We're also getting a new Nikon Imaging Cloud service, with more to be revealed soon. The Nikon Z6 III is available from July 2024, as body only or in a number of lens kits.
I wasn't prepared for how big an upgrade this third generation model would be: it’s faster, more powerful and comes with some welcome handling refinements that make me confident it’ll be up there with the best mirrorless cameras in 2024.