Nice balance, versatile and works great for shooting landscapes whether up close or on a wide scale.

Enjoy using this lens at my daughter's soccer games.

Have it for few months now and very pleased with results, had to practice and play with settings for a while to understand how to focus better.Surely need longer lens quite often though, but the weigh scares me a bit. Will be at least 1.2 kg more...

I am primarily a bird shooter and my primary set up is my Nikon D750 with the Nikkor 200-500 f5.6.  That works really well for me, but it is a heavy rig to carry around for a few hours.  I bought this lens as my birding backup.  It is smaller in diameter and length and super light compared to the 200-500.  I think this is a great lens, and especially so for the price.  It is great in the three areas that are most important to me: build quality, sharp in the center, and quick autofocus.  Build quality feels like a top quality Nikkor lens that I expect but not excessively heavy.  It is easy to swing around and bring up to the eye quickly.  I need sharpness in the center and can always crop the edges, but this lens is sharp all the way out to the edges and corners across the full focal length.  The autofocus is noticeably quicker than my AF-S lenses and really quiet.  I turned my focus beep back on just to make sure it was locked on.  I have used this four or five times with both my full frame and crop sensor D5600 (giving equivalent focal length of 450mm) and I am super pleased with it.  The VR works well but I cant really tell a difference between normal and sport VR, at least not for the way I use it.  I have had this lens for about a month and could do a better review if I had a couple of months of usage.  However, if you are considering this lens I would say get one and you will not be disappointed.  This is a great lens.  I cannot think of any negative other than B&H didnt give it to me for free, so it gets five stars from me!

This is an excellent lens for traveling light. Both image quality and AF speed are good, which I understand are a couple of key improvements over the previous version of this lens. I now frequently take this lens instead of my much heavier Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 on extended travel.

For a long time I wrestled with the decision to buy this lens.  I worried that it might not be up to my expectations.  Quite the contrary.  It is far better than I had imagined.  


This lens is sharp with excellent contrast.  Im very pleased with it.

Very nice lens. Im using it for handheld wildlife photography of larger subjects such as wild turkeys and whitetail deer,and bought it to replace an older 70-200 f2.8 Nikkor lens that had gotten damaged. This lens is much lighter and therefore much easier to lug around the woods. Less glass doesnt mean a loss in quality images in this case however. This lens is sharp. The auto focus is very fast and quiet and I think the VR more reliable than in my old 70-200. The 5.6 aperture at max zoom doesnt present a problem. I always used the 70-200 with a 1.4 teleconverter attached making it an f4 lens so now I just bump up the ISO one stop to make up the one stop difference between the lenses. Any slight increase in noise can be easily cleaned up later. I strongly recommend this lens for anyone needing some mid-range telephoto power.

Reasonably compact when collapsed.  Quick, quiet autofocus.  I plan to use with limited lenses and a flash in a messenger bag, rather than the growing heft of my big bag.
As Nikon has a history of many 70-300 lenses, be sure this actually works with your particular camera model.

I wish I could have afforded the 80-400 lens but since I couldn't this was the most affordable option and I am very happy with the purchase. The photos I have taken with it are all tack sharp with very good color. Overall I would say this is a very good lens.

While I shoot with an 80-400mm that I love dearly, sometimes the size and weight is just not appropriate.  I bought the 70-300 VR to replace my older version of this lens, and I could not be happier.  It is the perfect combination of price, size, and image quality; and it couples so comfortably with my D750.  This is a great travel lens.