Touchscreen
While the deeper grip helped, the real ease-of-use story here is the 3.2-inch touch-screen vari-angle LCD; the D5500 marks Nikon's first touchscreen enabled SLR. The menus have been tweaked to make them easier to navigate by finger. The main display looks similar to before; however, you must tap on the 'i' button to activate the settings options you can change via touch.
The first instinct is to tap away on the main display elements, as we're used to doing on our touchscreen tablets and smartphones. However, that approach makes less sense on a camera display when that camera will be bouncing around on your neck, or your fingers might brush the back of the display while holding or jostling the camera into position for that ultimate shot. If there weren't a button to press first to activate the touch screen menus, it would be too easy to inadvertently change something.
Not only could you use the touchscreen for navigation, but it also worked well for shooting. Tap on a spot and the camera will focus on that point, then shoot the picture without tapping the shutter.
This may seem convenient, but my biggest challenge was holding the camera steady with my right hand while using my left to finger to tap on the screen and select where I wanted to focus. I also wished there was a little longer timer from the time I tapped to the time the shutter took the shot - I felt rushed trying to return my left hand to steadying the camera.
Like the D5300 before it, the D5500 has built-in Wi-Fi, and works with your phone using Nikon's app. Beyond that, the specs are fairly straightforward: 24.2 megapixel CMOS DX sensor, Nikon's EXPEED 4 processor, 39 points of autofocus with 9 cross-type sensors and 5 frames per second shooting in burst mode.
Indeed, in my limited use of the camera on the CES 2015 show floor, I was impressed with how the camera handled, and look forward to trying it out in real-world environments.
