It's a plastic lens, what more can I say. It's much the same as any of Nikon's other plastic lenses and I've never had a problem with those. I have seen a few comments that people feel the 18-140mm doesn't have quite as higher build quality as the 18-200mm VR. I'd say it's much the same, it just looks a little less tarty. On FX bodies, the image circle is visible using the FX crop at all focal lengths. At 18mm and 140mm you can clearly see the left and right sides of the image circle in the FX frame, not just dark corners. This lens is not usable on FX cameras except when you set DX crop on them. Such tight image circles have implications on vignetting characteristics, which I'll get to in the performance section.

So compared to the 18-105mm, the 18-140mm seems to be better build quality due mainly to the mount, has a slightly better range with no apparent loss in quality and only adds a little extra bulk.Lateral chromatic aberrations, typically seen as purple or blue fringes in the peripheral areas of the image, are very well controlled with this lens. The 100% crops below give you an idea of what you should expect in the worst case. The 18-140mm ƒ/3.5-5.6 provides very sharp results, at least as good as its recent contemporaries and better than previous designs in the same focal length range. if you shoot raw and then use non-manufacturer software to process that data into images then there is the possibility that there might be some, but I doubt it. You can use the control ring to manually focus by default, but you can customise it to access various camera functions, such as aperture, ISO speed or exposure compensation. This is something you can set via the camera’s main menu and can be quite handy in certain circumstances. The Nikkor 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G AF-S ED DX VR (phew!) lens appears to be sort of a double duty lens. First, it's filling in for the old discontinued 18-135mm, which was a very sharp but flawed lens that didn't have VR. Second, the new lens appears to be trying to up the ability ante for the 24mp sensor cameras, where even the well-behaved 18-105mm is showing its age. Nikon has gotten better with each generation of its convenience zoom designs (both DX and FX), and the 18-140mm is just another example of that.

Distortion has always been a feature of Nikon's consumer-level zoom lenses, and the 18-140mm has not improved in this regard. There is no focal length setting where the lens has been optimized to produce a distortion-free image. The distortion profile for the lens varies widely with the focal length being used. This plasticy lens makes ultra-sharp images at every setting from corner-to-corner and it focuses ultra-close. It's small, lightweight and very precisely made. Treat it carefully and it will provide years of great images. The short minimum focus distance of 0.2 m/0.66 ft at the maximum wide-angle position is ideal for close-up shots. With a 7-blade rounded diaphragm, I almost only get 14-pointed sunstars on brilliant points of light at the smallest apertures.If there's a weakness in the lens at all, it would be performance at 140mm, where image sharpness doesn't quite reach the level seen at other focal lengths. However you'd be hard-pressed to see the quality difference in practical use.