The Nikon Z 6 is the speedier of the two Z system mirrorless cameras.

The Z 6 eliminates the need for a mirror box, swapping an optical finder for an EVF and putting focus on the sensor itself.

Interface ports include USB-C, 3.5mm audio, and mini HDMI.

The Z 6 sports a standard tripod socket and a weather-sealed body.

The monochrome OLED on the top plate shows exposure information.

The EVF is among the best in any mirrorless camera. Its diopter adjustment is on the side.

Rear controls include the i button and a small eight-way joystick to move the focus point around.

The body itself is fairly slim, but the handgrip is a deep as you find on a larger SLR>

The touch LCD tilts up and down, but doesn't swing out to the side.

A single memory card slot may make the Z 6 a nonstarter for some photographers, but we are happy to see that it supports fast XQD memory cards.

The following crops show the Z 6's image quality at each full stop ISO setting.

The Z 6 delivers images at ISO 800 which are as clean and crisp as what is able to capture at its native ISO 100 sensitivity.

We see slight smudging of detail starting at ISO 1600 and increasing modestly through ISO 6400.

At ISO 12800 the smudges intensify and fine lines lose their crisp edges, and the look is similar at ISO 25600.

. Moving past those settings, to ISO 51200, results in images that are more blur than anything else; the story is the same at the top ISO 102400 and 204800 settings.

The Z 6 also captures images in Raw format.

We typically show Raw images with Lightroom's default processing settings applied, but the Z 6 bakes in suggested corrections to Raw images.

You can change many of the adjustments, but there are lens corrections which cannot be disabled when processing photos in Adobe software.

Nikon's Raw processing is about the same as Adobe's default settings at lower ISOs, but starts to show less detail around ISO 6400.

We've also included crops with all development sliders set to Adobe defaults.

The differences aren't apparent at lower ISO settings, but you'll see the Adobe processing is a bit sharper, with more detail, at ISO 6400 and up.

Typically Adobe does a better job removing color artifacts with default settings, but the Z 6 shows some at the highest settings.

This is the same image as the previous slide, with more aggressive noise reduction applied. It is on par with the ISO 204800 output from the Sony a7 III.