Nikon D3200 review

Nikon D3200 review - Design

The exterior design of the D3200 differs slightly from the D3100, with the most noticeable change the handgrip. It's still a decent size, but the shutter button and top of the grip are now at a more pronounced angle. If you've got big hands, then you may find your little finger hangs off the bottom of the grip thanks to the camera's squat proportions, but overall it has to be one of the more comfortable grips for a camera in this class.

The outer shell is constructed from a high-impact plastic with a relatively matt finish to it, while there's a textured rubber coating round the handgrip and thumb rest at the rear. Unlike a lot of cameras in this price bracket, rather than getting to the memory card via the battery compartment, the D3200 has its own dedicated card slot and separate hinged door on the side of the body.
While its not going to worry some Compact System Cameras for compactness, it's pretty small for a DSLR.

Nikon has refined the button placement on the D3200 over the D3100, making a few subtle changes. The combined Live View/Video record switch on the D3100 has disappeared. Instead, there's now a single Live View button on the rear of the D3200, and a dedicated video record button that now sits next to the shutter button on the top plate.

Where the mode dial on the D3100 also had an additional switch round it's collar to change the drive mode of the camera, this has now disappeared. Instead, there's now a single button on the rear of the camera to make these changes via the rear screen.
 
At the rear of the camera, there have been very few changes apart from the addition of the drive mode and the single Live View buttons already mentioned. The five buttons down the side of the screen maintain the same functions as on the D3100, though the zoom in/zoom out buttons for reviewing images have swapped round in keeping with the rest of the Nikon DSLR family.