Like most my gear reviews, this is an actual honest desire to determine which of these four compact cameras are going to work best for us and hopefully you. Something I’m always preaching is to always have a camera with you, especially if you have kids or pets, or just want to document your own existence and the existence of those close to you. Having a camera with you always is absolutely the first step in that process.
Of course, most of us have a camera in our pocket all the time, it’s called a smartphone, and that’s fine for most people, but I personally prefer something with larger sensor and lens, and with more professional features, dynamic range, and higher image quality. So for the last two weeks Denae and I have been shooting with these four compact cameras with the goal to determine which is the best.
And the four cameras we’re looking at are generally considered to be the top compact cameras on the market. I know there are others, but these are the top sellers in more of the professional and prosumer markets, and I had to draw the line somewhere.
I’ll be comparing them in some detail and I’ll try to be as unbiased as I can. For those who want to know what I enjoyed shooting with the most, I’ll share that with you at the very end.
The first camera is one that has garnered cult follower status and I know many of you love it. It’s the Ricoh GR III (Amazon link). Next we have the Sony RX 100 VII (Amazon link). Canon’s version of that camera, the G5X II (amazon link), and finally, the Panasonic Lumix LX100 II (Amazon link). So that’s what we’ve got. Let the compact camera combat commence.
First consideration is price.
Sony RX100 VII: $1,298.00 USD
LX 100 II:$ 999 USD
G5X II: $899.99 USD
GR III: $897 USD
In USD we find three of these within striking distance of the others, with the Ricoh GR III representing the most affordable option by a slim margin over the G5X II. The Sony RX100 VII is quite a bit more, and that’s not a huge surprise considering the bells and whistles that go along with that one and considering that the Sony has long lead the R&D charge with their RX100 compact series, with other compact camera manufacturers constantly trying to keep up. But still, that additional $300 dollars is quite a leap. I think you’d have to really be taken with this camera over the others to swallow that price difference.
But I also think those prices reflect build quality. When we look at the build quality of the Sony RX 100 VII and the LUMIX LX 100 II we generally see more metal involved, whereas there seems to be more plastic involved in the build for the Canon G5X III and certainly the Ricoh GR III. And while this isn’t a long-term study the Ricoh GR III definitely feels the most fragile with the LX 100 II feeling like it could take more of a beating. For what that’s worth.
Pocketability
Now, as I said, the basic requirement here is that each of these cameras is pocketable, or something you could have on you at all times. And here’s where the Ricoh GR III wins handily, being the slimmest and lightest. It can remain in your pocket all day and be the least intrusive.
The Sony RX100 VII is next. Other than the lens, it’s actually smaller. If they wouldn’t have gone with such a massive zoom range, it’d probably be able to compete with the GR III in width. But still, very pocketable and slides in and out extremely easily.
The G5X II is also still manageable in the pocket. But because it has a rubbery grip, it’s not a smooth experience and it is a little larger.
Finally, while the Lumix LX100 is pocketable, it’s definitely pushing it. If you were tight jeans, it’s probably not going to work for you. But if you’re a really stylish dad like me and where cargo shorts a lot, it’s fine.
But, this is the one camera of the four that does not have a lens cover when it’s off. So if you’re going to keep this in your pocket, you’ll also want a lens cap to protect it. But the problem there, in addition to being more fiddly when what you want is speed, is that you can’t truly operate it one-handed like you can with the others.
Good news here though. There is a lens cap which will open and close automatically when the lens expands to the on position. You can find one here on Amazon: https://geni.us/2CkNGP
Startup times
Now since we also need speed, when we’re using these devices, let’s look at startup times.
No surprise here that the Ricoh GRIII, as a responsive street shooting device, wins it with a lightning fast startup time of half a second. The G5X II takes about a second. The RX100 takes a bit more than a second. And the lumbering Lumix LX100 II takes almost 2 seconds to startup.
Grip
When it comes to grip and handling, of course none of these are substantial and made explicitly for comfort. The Sony RX100 VII, for example, makes no effort to bring in any ergonomics, whatsoever. It has no grip and there is very little surface area to grab, and the surface area that there is is slick metal. So while that’s nice for slipping into pockets, it’s not nice for keeping ahold of and I’d be worried about dropping this guy.
The Ricoh GR III has a nice grip, but the angle of it forces your fingers straight into the lens and I really don’t like.
I think the Canon G5X II, even though it’s about the same amount of space, it has more room for your fingers to grip without knocking the lens. And it’s actually far easier to grip and keep hold of than the heavier and larger LX100 II.
EVF
When it comes to shooting experience, I tend to really like a good EVF. The LX100 II definitely has the largest EVF which makes it a much more pleasant shooting experience. But on the other hand, it protrudes from the body. If it tucked away like the RX100 VII and the G5X II it would make this device a bit more pocketable.
I didn’t mind using the RX100 VII’s little popup EVF. It’s nice and bright and works great. I feel like they’ve balanced the need for pocketability with the goal of allowing EVF shooting.
The G5X II has that same sort of Sony popup EVF, but it’s the older style which requires you to pull the EVF out towards you. This is fiddly, especially when you’re in a hurry as it’s an extra step. But that’s not even the worst part of this feature. The worst thing here is that it does not take a lot of pressure from your eye to push that back in. And and it doesn’t take much, just a slight little nudge and it engages the LCD. So I’d be shooting with the EVF and suddenly lose picture. It did cause me to miss shots.
The Ricoh GR III, of course, has no built-in EVF. They make one that gives you framelines, but no real data as an external mounting option. I haven’t tried that, so I can’t speak to it. But the problem here for me is that I live in an area where it’s really bright outside almost all year around. When I’m photographing the family outside, say if we’re mountain biking or hiking, the LCD is really hard to use. Especially since there is no articulation to it. I need an EVF for those situations. So for travel, if you’re going to find yourself in bright tropical areas, this is something you need to consider.
LCD
When it comes to LCD’s I find that only one of them isn’t up to par. The Lumix LX 100 II just feels older, it probably is. Images don’t look very good with dark tones looking just awful. And I found that off-putting at those few times that I did chimp a bit. So that’s something to note.
Exposure controls
As far as shooting controls, I definitely feel like the Lumix LX 100 II wins for usability. It has a dedicated, numbered aperture ring, it has a dedicated and numbered shutter dial, a plus/minus EV dial, and it’s highly customizable otherwise with, I wanna say 11 customizable buttons and a customizable ring. The only weird thing about it, in my opinion is this the strangeness of having an aspect ratio picker here on the lens. This feels like a feature you change once, if at all. It seems odd to dedicate a hardware location to that feature to me.
And while it doesn’t have the same dedicated dials for a pleasant Fuji-esque shooting experience like the LX100 II, the Canon G5X II does have a plus/minus EV dial, which is really nice when you shoot aperture priority with smart ISO for documentary photography like I do.
I feel like having at least that dedicated dial would have helped the shooting experience of both the Ricoh GR III and the Sony RX 100 VII, but I recognize also that not everyone shoots this way.
The Ricoh GR III has this little lever style dial, but it feels so cheap and plasticy and I just hate it. I also find that I constantly am accidentally pressing it and bringing up the image control menu. I’ve heard this camera is totally customizable and if I were doing a long term review of this, I’m sure I’d mess with that a lot. And I think you really have to if you’re going to invest in this. You’ll need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to get it configured the way that works best for you, including how you setup things like snap focus and and just the exposure settings in general.
As far as usability the RX100 VII probably loses here. There are less dials to work with and customize, and you do feel more reliant on the LCD to change settings. It’s not wonderful.
Focus
Next I want to talk a bit about both AF and focus control with these cameras. But I think it’s worth pointing out that there is a lot of variation here and it will depend hugely on your style of focusing. But I’ll try to cover it well enough to hit most of your needs.
When it comes to autofocus in general the Sony RX100 VII mops the floor with the other cameras in this department. None of them will be able to achieve what it can with its 357 phase detect auto points and that animal and human face detection technology. Canon certainly has the capability, but the G5X II does not have any phase detection auto points, causing it to rely on contrast detect only, like the LUMIX LX100 II. Having said that, all three of these cameras focused well and got the job done well during my tests. The only one that really just sucked was the Ricoh GR III. I missed an incredible amount of shots waiting for this thing to autofocus. Now, a lot of the time I was in low light. Our home isn’t bright and I shot plenty at night. That might be the Achilles heal of this device. I’m not really sure. But it’s a bit surprising since this sensor does incorporate phase detection, unlike the Canon and LUMIX.
But I think most people who use this camera do so on the street, they utilize the snap focus capability, they shoot in a style which incorporates hyperfocal distance, they don’t rely on autofocus. And if you like that idea, you may enjoy this camera a bit more.
But for those of us with pets and kids and who appreciate a responsive face detection system, The RX 100 VII will be the most appealing.
But often I actually prefer to use focus points and turn off all automatic face detection, especially while using an EVF. And in that department both the LUMIX LX100 II, the Canon G5X II , and RX100 VII all are really great since you can use the touch drag focus feature. This is where when you’re holding the EVF up to your eye, you can use your thumb to change where the focus point is on the screen. You don’t have to drag clear across the screen to do so, it can remain relative to where you’re dragging here on the right side. And I found this to be both reliable to use with all three. Unless you try to shoot vertically, then it all sorta goes to hell since your nose is then involved and messes things up. But this is my favorite style of shooting, personally.
Sensor size and image quality
Getting into sensor size and image quality, this is a mixed bag. It’s hard to go apples to apples when you have different size sensors and different types of lenses. But I’ll do my best to help you navigate those waters.
Let’s first off get the lay of the land by comparing sensor sizes. As we’ve already mentioned, the Ricoh GR III has the largest sensor with that 24mp APS-C sensor. The LUMIX LX100 II is next largest with a m4/3 sensor, however it has fewer pixels than the others with only 17mp. The Canon G5X II and the Sony RX100 VII both utilize a smaller 1-inch 20mp back side illuminated sensor.
When it comes to lenses I’ll just let you pause the video if you want to go through them side by side. I don’t really want to read the specs back to you. There’s a lot of variety here.
If we were to say which of these cameras is capable of producing the highest detail, sharpness and dynamic range, I’m going to say that, based on my limited testing, the Ricoh GR III wins it here. It has the highest megapixel count and largest sensor. That’s generally going to give it the best dynamic range and the most data to work with in post. And with that 28mm equivalent, 2.8 aperture prime lens, it’s no surprise that it provides the sharpest picture. The center is dead sharp all across the aperture range and for documentary style photography where the corners are never going to be as important, it’s still serviceable wide open.
Regarding these other lenses, there’s nothing here to write home about. To varying degrees, these zoom lenses choose flexibility over quality. I’d say the Sony and Canon lenses are comparable. While the Sony lens provides a crazy flexible zoom range of 24-200mm at the cost of a slower aperture, the more modestly zooming 24-120mm zoom range of the Canon is probably a smidge sharper, in general.
But man, that LUMIX LX100 II lens was a bit disappointing. Not horrible at the wide end and wide open, but zoom in fully and it’s pretty bad at 2.8 and never fully sharpens up to the degree the others do fully zoomed. I find that most surprising since with a more limited zoom range, I would expect a higher image quality. But it is what it is.
Power
When you compare battery life these are manufacturer ratings, as far as how many shots you’ll get. I have not tested this personally, just passing on what they are reporting, so take that with a grain of salt.
Close focus / Macro
When it comes to close focus, or macro work, all of these except for the Sony RX 100 VII will allow to get really close. The Canon G5X II and the Ricoh GR III both have macro modes you can switch into. This just moves the lens a bit so you are able to focus close to objects, but don’t leave it in macro mode or you’ll never be able to focus on anything of significant distance and you won’t be sure what you did to deserve such a poor treatment from your device.
So with that macro mode enabled the Ricoh GR III wins as far as reproduction ratio.
But the LUMIX LX 100 II has a really close focus without having to switch into any macro mode and it’s almost as close as the Ricoh GR III, so that’s a strong advantage there.
And while we’re here at the close and wide end, let’s just take a quick peek at the bokeh, cuz I know that matters to a lot of you. We are wide open on these shots.
And let’s also compare how things look at more of a portrait field of view. With the zooms, we’ll head on out to their furthest reaches for these shots so you can see what sort of compression and depth of field you’ll be able to get here. Keep in mind we’re wide open on each of these cameras for these shots also.
FPS
The last feature I want to compare is continuous burst. And there is quite a difference here in capability. It can be nice to use burst when documenting pets and children for a variety of situations. And if that’s important to you, the Canon G5X II is going to be the camera for you. But even the LUMIX LX 100 II at 11FPS is more than plenty for what I usually feel I need. What isn’t great here is the Ricoh GR III, which even for street photography, it surprises me that everyone is ok with such a low frame per second continuous shooting. On the streets I love to grab bursts when a moment is fleeting. There really is no reason not to. I know some people have created artificial rules that say this is somehow cheating, but isn’t the point to secure a documentation of events happening around you? Who cares how you got that, as long as it is authentic and thought provoking.
Those are all the features I wanted to cover. I realize that there are many, many more features we could compare, including video, integrated ND filters, and screen articulation and many many more, I chose to focus on features that matter the most to those of us looking at a device to document their day to day lives, so hopefully you found that helpful.
If you would like to see sample documentary-style images I’ve taken, please head over to the end of my video version of this comparison and enjoy the slideshow there.
My opinion
And for those of you still reading and who care what I personally think, first off, thanks for sticking around so long. I have to be honest with you though, if I had to choose one of these four, it’s not an easy choice, even after a few weeks shooting with them non-stop.
So let’s start by eliminating cameras.
I think I have to eliminate the Sony RX 100 VII first off. While there are a lot of features I find compelling about it there are a few things that I hate. While I love the popup EVF the crazy zoom range that forces it to have that really slow aperture is not helpful. I shoot almost exclusively wide, and so a 200mm zoom range is lost on me. For those of you who travel though, you may find that glorious. It’s just not right for me. Now I’ve heard plenty of people who say that the RX 100 V is the one to go with as that’s the last model that has the faster aperture lens but still has phase detect auto. But My issue with that camera is that it has that same popup style EVF as this Canon G5X II where you have to pull it out and you can nudge it closed with your eye. That’s a deal breaker for someone who loves EVF shooting like I do.
And so, yeah, spoiler alert, as much as I like this Canon G5X II otherwise, I can’t get past my hatred for the fiddly EVF.
I know my next comment is going to piss off a lot of die-hard Ricoh GR III fans, but guys it’s a great camera, but it’s not great for me. It needed an integrated, popup EVF. It needs higher continuous burst rate, and it needs better autofocus. But it’s probably the perfect camera for street photographers.
Finally we have the LUMIX LX 100 II. There’s a lot to love about this camera. I love the shooting experience. I wish it were a smidge smaller. I wish it had the Sony RX 100 VII’s style popup EVF to slim it down. I wish the lens closed down so that I could use it fully one-handed. It is pocketable, but only just and only with the right pants/shorts. And I wish it had just a bit better image quality with maybe a higher megapixel count?
So where does that leave me? Honestly, I’m not ready to invest in any of these. All of these could make some tweaks that would make them extremely appealing to us documentary photographer types. Really all of them are so close. And even Fuji, if they would come out with a mark II of that x70 that had a popup EVF like the RX100 could be perfect. So we’ll just have to wait and see.
But that’s all for now my friends. I hope you found some value or enjoyment out of this one. I’ll leave you with a few more photos I took from each of these on rotation. Remember, to do some good with your camera where you can. And we’ll talk to you again real soon.