Nikon Nikkor Z 180-600 mm f/5.6-6.3 VR review - Summary

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Nikon Nikkor Z 180-600 mm f/5.6-6.3 VR

12 June 2025

Maciej Latałło

11. Summary

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Pros:

solid, closed, and weather-sealed mechanical construction,
very good image quality in the frame centre,
sensible image quality on the edge of the APS-C sensor,
negligible longitudinal chromatic aberration,
moderate lateral chromatic aberration,
lack of problems with spherical aberration,
slight distortion,
low astigmatism,
properly corrected coma,
low vignetting even on full frame,
moderate focus breathing,
nice appearance of out-of-focus areas,
efficient image stabilization,
good price-performance and price-parameters ratio.

Cons:

a lot of problems with the performance against bright light,
autofocus performance leaves a lot to be desired.

I don't doubt that the Nikkor Z 180-600 mm f/5.6-6.3 VR is a very valuable addition to the Nikon Z system and it will find a lot of happy fans. The mere comparison of the number of pros and cons speaks in its favour and I admit the distortion and vignetting performance really impressed me. These two categories show clearly that Nikon optics specialists know their job and are conscientious and apply themselves. They don't pass on their responsibilities to software specialists.

Still I cannot stop thinking that some limitations of this lens were left deliberately. On the one hand the producers wanted to present a worthy rival of the Sony FE 200-600 mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS when it comes to the price and performance, on the other hand they couldn't forget about the existence of such a model as the Nikkor Z 600 mm f/6.3 VR S. You can't make two lenses of the same producer compete against each other. That's why, in my opinion, the results of the Nikkor 180-600 mm at the maximum focal length are the weakest and the autofocus unit leaves a lot of room for improvement. If they adopted a different approach, creating a model which results improve with the increase of the focal length, it would be much harder to persuade the Z system users to buy the two times more expensive Nikkor Z 600 mm f/6.3 VR.