The OM System PEN brings a lot of camera (interchangeable lenses, twin command dials, an EVF, in-body stabilization and a rated degree of weather sealing) to not a lot of camera (it’s usefully small).

Here’s our hands-on overview of a camera that brings together familiar components in a form that we haven’t seen (at least in North America) for some time.

It’s more an E-P7 with a viewfinder than a direct PEN-F successor, but that delivers an interesting, relatively affordable option for everyday and travel photography.

If you want to read about the PEN in more depth and see more sample images, check out our written review.

In a somewhat cryptic statement, Ricoh has said it is ending production of all current Pentax K-series DSLRs. However, it also says it will “continue to pursue the shooting style that is unique to SLR cameras.”

Ricoh says: “we will leverage the K-mount legacy that was built over more than half a century, to develop a new series of digital SLR cameras based on an entirely new concept,” but warns “it will take time for these products to come to life.”

It says it will provide updates as development continues.

The OM System PEN is a compact, Micro Four Thirds camera built around a 20MP sensor and aimed at travel and everyday use. It riffs on the concept of the much-loved PEN series but delivers something a little distinct from its predecessors.

It’s not a like-for-like replacement for 2016’s PEN F, but it brings some of the ideas from that model to the more affordable end of the market.

Key specifications

• 20.4MP Four Thirds (226mm²) CMOS sensor
• In-body image stabilization rated to 5.5EV
• On-sensor phase detection focus with human and dog/cat recognition
• 2.36M dot EVF
• Up to 30fps shooting (with AF and AE locked), 8fps mech
• Multi-shot modes, including high resolution, Live ND, Live Bulb, Live Time, Live Composite
• 410 shot/charge battery life rating

The PEN is available now for around $1000, body-only. This is significantly lower than the $1200 launch price of the PEN-F back in 2016, especially once you consider that inflation makes that equivalent to around $1700 today.

Index

• What’s new
• How it compares
• Body and handling
• Autofocus
• Image quality
• Video
• In use
• Conclusion
• Sample gallery
• Specifications
• Press release

What’s new

The PEN is the first top-tier entry into the line in five years, and the first time in a decade that the series will be sold in North America. It’s essentially a blend of the two models that preceded it: primarily the mid-priced E-P7 but also the enthusiast PEN-F.

From the E-P7 it gets the lighter, lower-cost plastic construction, rather than the metal body that had marked out the ‘big’ PENs before it. It also inherits the two-position color mode switch on the front plate, and the simpler dial layout. But, crucially, from the PEN-F it gets an electronic viewfinder, built into the top corner of the body: making it only the second PEN model to feature one.

It also foregoes the stacked sensor features in the OM-1 and OM-3 models, presumably also in the name of cost reduction, meaning it has more in common with the OM-5 II.

The PEN’s color mode switch gives you access to eight color and mono modes that can be modified in interesting ways

These changes start to make sense when OM System talks about its target audience for the camera: a mixture of enthusiasts who want a small mirrorless camera and users looking to buy their first camera for travel and everyday photography.

The lower-cost construction and significant overlap with the OM-5 II’s componentry are reflected in its significantly lower launch price (there’s enough of a difference that it’s less expensive in money terms, despite a decade of inflation).

The ninth-generation TruePic processor means it gains more up-to-date autofocus than the PEN-F or E-P7 (now with Dogs & Cats recognition mode, rather than just human detection) but the camera is still limited to 8-bit video at up to 4K/30 and its multi-shot modes are less extensive and significantly slower than on more expensive stacked-sensor models such as the OM-3.

How it compares

There’s no direct competitor to the OM System PEN, if you’re looking for a small, rangefinder-style mirrorless camera. You can either opt for a similarly-priced APS-C model, such as the Fujifilm X-T30 III or Nikon Z50 II, but those are both SLR-styled models with no image stabilization. The alternative is the more expensive, metal-bodied X-E5, which is much more in keeping with the PEN’s styling but closer to the PEN-F market positioning, in terms of price.

Finally, if you just want a small, stylish camera and can live without the ability to change lenses, the Panasonic L10 comes into play.

Despite its more modest pricing, the PEN stacks up pretty reasonably against its peers, on paper. It’s interesting to note that you get the same viewfinder panel, regardless of how much you spend, because it’s the only one made in this smaller size. The PEN is the only camera in this cohort to offer a standardized rating of environmental protection, even if it is the relatively modest IPX1 level.

However, while the PEN’s multi-shot modes are more sophisticated than its (quasi) peers, its video is distinctly outdated. And, though it doesn’t necessarily show through in the specs, so are some aspects of its autofocus performance.

Body and handling

Richard Butler

The PEN feels pretty solid, despite its construction primarily being engineering plastics, rather than metal casing used from the E-P1 up to the PEN-F. The body gives the sense of being made of quite thick material, meaning it feels suitably weighty in the hand, without being overly heavy.

The small front grip and thumb rest make the camera easy to keep hold of, and we found the two (customizable) command dials to be well-placed, whether you’re holding the camera to your eye or not.

The back of the camera is somewhat cluttered, though, with a CP button (accessing your choice of Computational Photography modes) next to the thumb rest being just one of six buttons crammed into the right-hand control array, in addition to a small four-way controller that is also used to access key features. In the absence of an AF joystick, this four-way controller, along with the camera’s touchscreen, becomes the main method for positioning the AF point.

Richard Butler

The PEN still has a single SD card slot, somehow still only supporting UHS-I cards. Its USB connector has been modernized to a Type C socket, but the underlying interface is still a distinctly dated 480Mbps USB-2.0 type. There’s also a micro HDMI port and a mic input, but there’s no headphone socket for audio monitoring, which should give a pretty clear signal about the PEN’s focus.

As with the OM-5 II, the PEN does not support the excellent little FL-LM3 rotatable, bouncable flash, which is no longer made. However, there are alternatives such as Godox’s iT30 and iT32/X5 combinations that provide small, flexible options.

Viewfinder

Richard Butler

The PEN becomes only the second model in the series to feature a built-in viewfinder. It’s the same 2.36M dot (1024 x 768px) finder as in the PEN-F, ten years ago. It’s worth noting, though, that this is the highest resolution finder made in the smaller 0.39″ format, which is why we continue to see it appear in cameras where size is the key focus of the design.

Screen

The rear screen is the same, fully-articulated 1.04M dot touchscreen that featured on the PEN-F. This is likely to divide audiences, with some people interpreting flip-out screens as being a sop to video shooters. However, we’ve been told by multiple manufacturers that, in surveys, about 50% of photographers prefer this screen arrangement. So, while street and candid shooters are likely to miss the tilting screen that allows more discreet camera operation, the wider target audience, looking to use the PEN for travel, are likely to appreciate the ability to fold the screen inwards, to keep it protected.

Battery

Richard Butler

The PEN uses a new battery pack, the rather compact BLS-7, it’s a 7.74V, 1285mAh unit, which means it has a capacity of 10Wh, rather than the 8.7Wh of the older, physically larger BLS-50 or the 9.0Wh of the PEN F’s BLN-1.

OM System says this delivers a battery rating of 400 shots per charge, when tested using the standard CIPA method, presumably based on the use of the more power-efficient rear screen. As usual, these ratings tend to significantly underestimate the real-world endurance of a battery, and getting twice the rated number is pretty common, depending on how you shoot.

In use

The PEN’s operation will be immediately familiar to OM System (and Olympus) users, though potentially somewhat overwhelming to most newcomers. For instance, the barrage of icons and settings displayed when you turn the camera on includes L8 in large letters at the top right of the screen, indicating that if you press the REC button on the top of the camera, you’ll get 8-bit video in a Long Group-of-Frames codec. Which doesn’t feel like essential information in stills mode, on a fairly stills-focused camera that can only capture 8-bit video.

Still, once you’ve learned your way around the screen, you’ll probably come to appreciate the Super Control Panel: a settings display showing most of the camera’s key settings in an interactive array. Tap on the setting you want to change, spin one of the command dials and you’ll find you have semi-quick access to just about all the settings you might want to change. Which makes me wonder if the camera needs quite as many buttons as it has. But still…

Six of the camera’s buttons are customizable, plus the button on any lens that has one. Alternatively, you can give up two of your custom buttons (and the ISO button) and dedicate the four-way controller to give direct AF point control, rather than having to press ‘left’ first. Buttons can be customized to have a different function in video or Slow & Quick modes, too.

This degree of customization extends to the dials, whose function can be dictated per exposure mode, and again, separately for stills and video. Likewise, once you’ve worked out which of the camera’s computational photography modes you actually use, you can narrow the function of the CP button to only invoke those.

Richard Butler

The menus are relatively easy to navigate, with a decent degree of signposting, meaning you’ll quickly get a feel for where different types of setting are likely to live. However the number of options and the level of customization is extensive, bordering on the excessive, so things can seem a little intimidating, initially.

Like the more recent OM cameras, the PEN’s ‘film’ color modes, selected with the switch on the front of the body, can have the saturation levels of different hues adjusted, to tailor their response. You can also tweak the highlights, shadows and mid-tone response, giving you a lot of flexibility. This comes especially handy in conjunction with the in-camera Raw conversion feature, as it means you can make very specific adjustments to your images while still using the camera’s choice of attractive JPEG modes.

In keeping with the camera’s attempt to attract first-time camera users, the PEN has a series of Scene modes on its dial. These cover a decent range of common shooting scenarios and are able to invoke the multi-shot modes, if needs be. But we’re still not sure how many people will buy a dedicated camera, only to use restrictive preset modes that are less clever and flexible than the ones on their phones.

In-camera Raw conversion

Most brands offer in-camera Raw conversion at this point, but OM Systems’ remains one of the most comprehensive and powerful. This is especially useful on a camera designed with travel in mind, where you may want to be able to share the things you’ve seen without wanting to boot up your laptop.

OM System’s JPEG color, particularly its Neutral and Film modes can deliver really attractive results, so it’s nice to be able to tweak and exploit these, rather than trying to match them in a 3rd-party Raw converter.

The camera gives you a choice of simply applying your current settings to an Raw file, or defining two presets, so that your preferences are saved or can be applied to multiple images from a batch. There are a few awkward inconsistencies, though: the camera’s standard color modes let you adjust hightlights, shadows and midtones from within the conversion interface, the Film modes don’t, and instead take their highlights, shadows and midtones settings, along with any hue-specific saturation adjustments you’ve made to them, from the camera’s current settings, even if you’re trying to use a preset.

This means that you can, for instance, make WB fine-tune modifications or adjustments of the film modes that aren’t in the Raw conversion interface by changing the camera’s current settings, but it means applying the result, backing out of the converter, adjusting the camera’s settings, then trying again: meaning making iterative adjustments can be quite frustrating.

This doesn’t give the near infinite level of flexibility that, say, Panasonic’s LUT-based image processing does, but means you don’t have to mess around with exploring and downloading profiles: you can just tweak the already pleasant in-camera options.

Autofocus

The PEN uses the standard OM System AF interface, which gives you a choice of 6 AF point sizes, from small to covering the entire area over which the camera can focus. The smallest size isn’t especially small and can be moved to one of 121 positions, which puts a limit on the maximum level of precision you can achieve.

Human or Pet recognition can be engaged on top of this system. However, unlike most cameras, recognized subjects are prioritized over your AF point. So if the camera thinks it recognizes a subject, it’ll focus on that, irrespective of where you’ve asked it to focus. If there’s more than one subject in the frame, your chosen focus point will dictate which subject it should focus on. There’s a menu setting to specify whether the camera prioritizes recognized subjects or your AF point (and you can assign the AF-On and shutter button behaviors differently), but if you choose to prioritize your chosen AF point, subject recognition is completely ignored: it won’t focus on an eye or face where you’re asking it to focus.

Richard Butler

In practice, we found both recognition modes quite prone to false positives and that they’d try to focus on irrelevant subjects. Which is a particular problem, given that recognized subjects override your chosen focus point. Between these two factors, it becomes essential to position your AF point precisely (made a little more frustrating on a camera without an AF joystick), and to have a means of disengaging or over-riding the subject recognition system. It’s eminently usable, once you’ve got a feel for how it works, but it’s nothing like as effortless as the best modern cameras that simply focus where you ask them and then utilize subject recognition when appropriate.

The PEN’s general AF tracking system (for subjects the camera hasn’t been trained to recognize) feels pretty dated and significantly less sticky or dependable than its peers. We’ve become used to leaving cameras in tracking mode, selecting a target and recomposing at will, which isn’t something we’d recommend doing with the PEN. Other than a few shots where flare and bright highlights seemed to have confused the AF system, we were able to get a solid hit rate with the PEN, but don’t expect it to be action-ready and do be prepared to have to make more interventions to get the result you want.

Image quality

As you might expect, and as already seemed to be the case from the day-to-day shooting we conduct as part of every review, the PEN’s performance is a match for that of the OM-5 Mark II, with which it shares a sensor and processor. Our studio scene confirms this to a very fine degree.

Our test scene is designed to simulate a variety of textures, colors, and detail types you’ll encounter in the real world. It also has two illumination modes, full even light and low directional light, to see the effect of different lighting conditions.

Its 20MP sensor captures a good level of detail (our test scene gives a slight benefit to 4:3 aspect ratio cameras, reducing the already minor difference between the PEN and the 24MP of the Canon EOS R10). In terms of noise the PEN’s performance is a little behind the larger sensor of the Nikon Z50II, but it’s not significantly noisier than the Canon, whose 1.6x crop sensor seems to slightly underperform expectations.

The PEN’s performance is entirely in keeping with what we’d expect to see from a modern sensor, backing up the results we got when shooting its sample gallery. We’ve already seen that the JPEG engine can produce a range of attractive results and these confirm that the technical underpinnings are sound.

As with all formats, there’s a fairly direct size / image quality trade-off being struck, meaning you lose something in terms of peak image quality in order for the camera to be able to maintain its travel-friendliness, even when you take lenses into account.

For many people, that’ll be a trade-off worth making: the use of a Four Thirds sensor defines both the upper limit of its image quality, but also how small the camera/lens combinations can be. So while some manufacturers are focused on trying to make smaller cameras built around larger sensors, there’s a physical limit to how small the appropriate lenses can be, meaning you’re likely to carefully pick and choose to keep the package small, and you’ll need to revert to larger setups to attain their full IQ potential.

Richard Butler

The hand-held high resolution mode, that shots a series of shots in e-shutter mode, then combines them, in-camera, means it’s possible to boost the PEN’s image quality a little for select shots of relatively static subjects, and the tripod-based high-res mode, which is able to precisely position the sensor for optimal alignment, does an even better job. Both take a long time to process, but are nice to have in your back pocket, when the situation suits.

Video

Video is perhaps the most glaringly outdated aspect of the PEN, with the camera limited to 8-bit capture and topping out at 4K/30. There’s also no headphone socket, so no way of monitoring audio, when you’re recording, which risks you getting back to your computer and finding that distracting noises or incorrect recording levels have rendered your footage unusable.

The PEN can capture video using the OM Log400 curve, which offers some additional flexibility, in terms of tonal adjustment and color grading, but it’s limited, to say the least, in an era where 10-bit Log is pretty much standard. On the plus side, you can apply almost all of the camera’s color modes and even Art filters to your video, if you want distinctive-looking footage, straight out of camera.

There’s an S&Q (Slow and Quick) position on the power/mode switch but the available options are limited by the camera’s relatively modest video speeds. You can capture 1080 footage at up to 120 frames per second, for 1/5th-speed slow-mo.

Between the modest spec and less-than-dependable autofocus performance in video, the PEN wouldn’t be on our list if we were recommending a camera for someone looking to shoot a lot of video. Its strengths lie much more on the photography side of the spec sheet, so we would have preferred that the video mode wasn’t given such a prominent position on the power switch.

Conclusion

The OM System PEN is a delightful combination of size, capability and price. It’s not especially cutting-edge nor quite as easy to use as it wants to be, but it still succeeds in being engaging to operate, easy to carry with you and able to deliver attractive results at a price that seems eminently reasonable. It’s a combination that the rest of the industry seems to have forgotten how to deliver.

Richard Butler

Its autofocus isn’t as sophisticated as that of its peers. It can’t track subjects moving around the scene as well as its contemporaries, nor can it react to fast movement as reliably, and between the way it operates and how dependable it is, its subject recognition modes require more user input than on other cameras. And yet, for the kinds of everyday and travel photography we expect the PEN to be used for, this isn’t a fundamental concern.

Richard Butler

No, the PEN isn’t as seemingly effortlessly capable as some other mirrorless cameras can feel, and its comfort zone is somewhat narrower than theirs. But set the four-way controller to position the AF point and have a button to toggle subject recognition on and off and it’ll do most of what you ask of it, because no one is expecting the PEN to ‘turn its hand to a bit of sports and action shooting.’

Richard Butler

The PEN’s sensor size means it’s at its best during the daytime, but balanced on the other side of the fulcrum is the ability to offer small lens/body combinations for a range of activities. With the 12mm F2, 17mm F1.8, Panasonic 20mm F1.7 or 45mm F1.8, you can maintain a compact form factor with a high degree of portability that arguably only Fujfilm’s rather more expensive X-E5 comes near to. And the multi-shot modes will let you boost the camera’s image quality for relatively static scenes.

Experienced OM System users will welcome the ability to customize much of the camera’s operation, while newcomers may feel intimidated at first. Most of it can be safely ignored at first, and learned when you want to optimize the camera’s behavior (though we’d recommend engaging 0 sec Anti-Shock, straight out of the box).

The PEN can be the kind of travel companion that you will, on occasion, find somewhat irritating. The kind that sometimes won’t always do exactly what you want to do. But also the kind that you’re so glad you took with you. And with whom you’ll create memories you wouldn’t otherwise get to keep.

Scoring

Scoring is relative only to the other cameras in the same category. Click here to learn about what these numbers mean.

8.5 out of 10

8.6 out of 10

9.2 out of 10

7.8 out of 10

8.5 out of 10

8.2 out of 10

7.7 out of 10

8.0 out of 10

8.3 out of 10

7.2 out of 10

7.8 out of 10

9.2 out of 10

Show all scores

Overall score

84%

Scores reflect competition at the time of release; cross-year comparisons may be misleading

Expert summary

The OM System PEN is both charming and quirky. Some of its technology and performance is a little dated but this is reflected in its price. Overall it offers a level of image quality, usability and portability that no one else seems to have thought to offer.

Good for:

Travel, Everyday photography

Not so good for:

Sports, Action, Video

Reviewed on October 6, 2026

Read in-depth review

Sample gallery

Please do not reproduce any of these images on a website or any newsletter/magazine without prior permission (see our copyright page ). We make the originals available for private users to download to their own machines for personal examination or printing (in conjunction with this review); we do so in good faith, so please don’t abuse it.

OM System PEN specifications

Ricoh has confirmed it is developing an “x” variant of its GR IV enthusiast compact. The GR IVx will be built around an all-new 40mm equivalent F2.8 prime lens.

The new model will use the same 26MP BSI CMOS APS-C sensor as the recent GR IV, rather than the 24MP FSI chip used in the GR IIIx.

Ricoh

The company has released the full planned spec of the camera, suggesting development is already well advanced. Details include a lens with 8 elements in 6 groups, including 3 aspheric elements, which is a more complex design than the previous model.

As with the 28mm-equiv GR IV, the specs say we’ll can expect improved startup times, a move to 5-axis image stabilization and the adoption of the larger DB-120 battery. It will also see the adoption of faster WiFi 5 standard.

Ricoh says the GR IVx will be launched in “Winter 2026 or later,” with no details of price yet given.  For reference, the GR IV hit the shelves three months after its development was announced.

It’s been over a month since we launched the new DPReview.com website, and we wanted to give you an update.

We realize that a lot of the work we’ve been doing hasn’t been especially public-facing, so it hasn’t necessarily been obvious that this really is a Beta: we are listening to feedback and we are continuing to improve the site.

As well as fixing some glitches around user logins, we’ve been doing a lot of work to ensure that the site always delivers completely untouched, out-of-camera JPEGs, when you click through or download an image. This isn’t a requirement that the CMS software we’re using is usually expected to maintain, with the consistency that we need. So it’s meant a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure that we can live up to the high standards that we demand and that you can expect.

OOC images and HDR support

As a result of this work, we can now be confident that “Ultra HDR JPEG” files: JPEGs with HDR gain maps embedded, can be viewed correctly when you click through, but also when they appear within articles, if you have a compatible screen and browser.

HDR imagery is only likely to become more accessible and more prevalent in the coming years, so being able to correctly represent these files was important to us: both so that we can show the progress as it’s made and because it ensures we’re delivering all images exactly as they came out of the camera.

This may seem esoteric but it’s fundamental to the way our reviews are conducted: we provide unedited files precisely so you can draw your own conclusions, rather than just take our words for it.

Light mode and improved camera comparisons

With this done, we’re continuing to work on projects that you’ve been requesting and things that will be more obviously visible to readers of the site and members of the community. These include a “light” version of the site for editorial content, for those people who don’t like the site’s original white-on-black appearance.  We’re also working on a more advanced camera comparison tool that makes more extensive use of our camera specs database.

Neither is ready yet, but they’re just two of the more obvious features that we’ve heard the demand for, and are planning to deliver. In the meantime, please bear with us and keep letting us know how we can make the site even better.

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

The Leica SL3-P is a high-speed, high-resolution L-mount full-frame camera built around a 44MP BSI CMOS sensor. It’s the latest in the company’s SL range and perhaps the most polished and all-round capable camera in the series so far.

Key specifications

• 44MP BSI CMOS full-frame sensor with phase detection
• up to 40fps shooting with AF in 12-bit mode. Up to 15fps in 14-bit.
• Subject recognition AF
• 8K open-gate video up to 24p (7.2K open-gate up to 30p)
• Full-width 8K (UHD or ∼DCI) up to 30p
• Full-width 4K up to 30p, 4K/60 and 4K/120 with increasing crops
• Content Credentials image certification
• Battery rated to 383 shots per charge
• IP54-rated all-metal construction

The Leica SL3-P will be available immediately at a recommended price of $6695 excluding tax in the USA, or €5990, including sales tax.

Index:

• What is it?
• How it compares
• Body and handling
• In use
• Video
• Autofocus
• Initial impressions
• Image quality
• Conclusion
• Specifications
• Leica press release

What is it?

Thus far, Leica has produced high-resolution SL models and high-speed SL-S versions. The SL-P appears to be something of an attempt to merge the two lines, offering both high speed and high resolution.

The result is something akin to Sony’s recent a7R VI or, perhaps more pertinently, the Panasonic S1RII: not an out-and-out sports camera but more a studio and landscape camera that’s happy to venture further afield. That Panasonic comparison is unavoidable as the 44MP, 40fps headline spec is shared between both cameras, as are their processors, even if the branding of them differs.

However, our experience of the SL3-P and the S1RII reminded us of how different you can make two cameras, even if you start with many of the same components and have similar destinations in mind.

Leica talks a good game about building cameras that last, and that’s immediately apparent in the feel and heft of the SL3-P. But what’s really striking is how few control points the Leica seems to have. That minimalism, honing the camera down to its core functions and little more extends to the menus and interface, meaning it gives a very different experience to the Panasonic. Or, indeed, any other mainstream camera.

How it compares

Although it offers both high speed and high resolution, the SL3-P doesn’t match the do-everything levels of capability of the Nikon Z8 and Canon EOS R5 II, with their stacked CMOS sensors. Instead it’s closer in ethos to the Sony a7R VI or, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Panasonic S1RII, essentially delivering a studio and landscape camera that isn’t scared of a little action, rather than a camera you might pick for sports work.

We’ve also compared it here to the SL3, which offers higher resolution but less speed, if absolute image quality is more important to you than the added speed.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to find that the SL3-P’s specs are a very close match for those of the S1RII. The differences between the two cameras aren’t something readily captured in a specs table.

The original SL3 offers a slight boost in resolution capture but at the cost of a lot of the new camera’s flexibility. Sony’s a7R VI offers both though: higher resolution and competitively fast shooting with excellent autofocus and slightly wider dynamic range. It’s hard to imagine how two user interfaces and user experiences could be more different, for two cameras ultimately trying to do the same thing, though.

Body and handing

The SL3-P uses the same body as the existing SL3 models: a solid, angular block of a thing with a few large control points and a substantial grip to wrap your hand around. The Leica branding across the viewfinder hump is so beautifully proportioned that it’s easy to assume that this series (and, perhaps, a series of film cameras before it), have always looked this way. So it was a shock to see the original SL in the company’s archives and see how far the design has evolved.

There are two buttons on the front of the camera, two on the top and one on the back, none of which have marked functions. Instead they can be re-programmed with a long press. In addition there are three marked buttons on the back of the camera: Play, Fn and Menu.

Then there are the three large command dials: one towards the front of the top plate, one protruding from the rear of the right shoulder and a third on the top left of the camera (which I kept forgetting about, as it’s such an unorthodox place to find one).

Beyond this there’s a small rubber joystick on the back of the camera, and that’s about it. Relatively few control points and still fewer dedicated ones. No switches for focus mode or AF area, not even the seemingly obligatory stills/movie switch: that’s controlled by swiping left or right on the rear screen.

We’ll touch more on the user interface in the ‘In use’ section of the review, but Leica is continuing to refine the rather elegant and focused interface it introduced in the SL3. For instance, in this latest camera, the company has re-worked the way you select a video mode: letting you select the parameters that are most important to you: frame rate, resolution, codec, etc, then filtering down the available list from a seemingly unmanageable 193 down to the handful that fit your requirements. It sounds obvious once you’ve seen it done, but it’s cleaner and simpler than most cameras we use.

Viewfinder and screen

The SL3-P has the same viewfinder as the other SL3 models: a 5.76M dot OLED panel (1600 x 1200px) with 0.76x magnification and a 21mm eyepoint. A large circular rubber cushion makes the camera comfortable to use if you wear glasses and there’s a -4 to +2 diopter adjuster set behind that cushion.

The rear screen is a 2.33M dot (1080 x 720px) panel mounted on a tilt up/down mechanism.

Ports

The SL3-P has the same port arrangement as its sister models, with 3.5mm headphone and mic sockets and a full-sized HDMI socket under a large, rubber flap on the left flank of the camera. Below these is a USB-C socket that can be used for data transfer (10Gbps), tethering (including to an iPhone) or charging.

Battery

The camera uses the same BP-SCL6 battery as its siblings: a 15.8Wh unit that powers the camera to a rating of 383 shots per charge, when tested to the CIPA protocol. As always, this tends to significantly under-represent the actual number of shots you can expect to get, but a rating of nearly 400 shots per charge is the sort of number that should means an enthusiast photographer rarely has to worry about topping-up on a day’s shooting. It’s only intensive shooting such a weddings, or anything involving a mixture of video and stills that are likely to call for you to have a spare to hand.

In use

One of the Leica’s most compelling aspects isn’t something you can see from product photos or interpret from the spec sheets: the user interface.

The SL3-P uses the latest iteration of the back-to-basics interface Leica has been refining over the past few years.

At its heart, it’s designed around putting the key photographic parameters at your fingertips and minimizing the extent of, and need for, menu options. For instance, holding down a customizable button or long-pressing any of the on-screen icons brings up a list of other functions you can assign to it. In fact one of the few options present in the main menu is one to filter-down which options are presented to you, when you long-press a control point to customize its function.

The result is an interface very focused on the fundamental settings of photography. It affords you the luxury of just ignoring what’s going on in the interface, much of the time, and just letting you concentrate on the settings assigned to the two big dials, and what you’re seeing in your viewfinder.

the rest are designed to be configured (and reconfigured) to suit your shooting style and preferences.

This minimalist approach extends to the body and its control points, too, with a smattering of custom buttons, a joystick and three large, solid-feeling command dials being your points of contact. It’s remarkable how few dedicated control points there are and while, for my shooting, I found myself sometimes wishing for an AF mode selector, with a little work it’s very likely that you can set the camera up in a way you find very quick and easy to work with.

Because it’s such a different way of working, the interface takes a little bit of getting used to, though. It rewards you for taking the time to adjust to its design philosophy. One aspect of which is learning to save your setup as a user profile, or risk discovering that selecting the default profile erases any customization you’ve started applying.

It’s also worth recognizing what is and isn’t included in these profiles. Exposure mode is, but specific exposure settings aren’t, so my attempt to build a profile for freezing the action and another one, with a slower shutter speed, for panning ended up being unsuccessful. Likewise, it’s worth carefully planning your profiles before saving them: I thought it would be handy to define a custom button to switch between profiles. Which was great until I pressed the button and switched to a profile with different custom buttons settings, so couldn’t get back.

Overall it works very well, though, giving a very photo-focused shooting experience where, for all the cleverness that modern cameras have brought, you end up remembering that the only things that really matter are shutter speed, aperture value, composition and where you’re going to focus.

Video

Despite us saying that the SL3-P has a very photo-focused interface, it’s probably better to say that it’s a very exposure-focused. Swipe left on the camera’s settings panel and you get a similar but now video-centric display, with yellow, rather than red accents.

The SL3 offers an incredible range of video modes: 157 in total. These range from 8K open-gate capture, that uses the full extent of the sensor, via 8K in either 1.89:1 or 16:9 aspect ratios and on to 4K capture, again with a choice of aspect ratios. But the camera also offers a selection of other resolutions for each of these capture regions, letting you strike a balance between resolution capture and speed.

Like Panasonic’s S1RII, the SL3-P doesn’t quite have enough pixels to capture DCI 8K (8192 x 4320px) footage so instead outputs 8132 x 4288px footage. UHD 8K is no problem, though, so you can also select the more conventional 7680 x 4320 resolution, if you prefer.

As you’d expect of a modern camera, you get the choice of 10-bit Log or HLG, or 8-bit if you don’t plan to color grade, and you’re targeting SDR displays.

Video options:

As with the Panasonic S1RII, the SL3-P has a Dynamic Range Expansion mode in video, which reads each exposure in both low conversion gain mode for maximum highlight capture and in high conversion gain mode, for cleaner shadows, and combines the two, to boost DR.

This is available in any resolution mode but only at frame rates up to 30p. In each case it increases the readout rate by around 33%. So, for instance, the UHD 8K/24 mode increases from 23.9ms to 31.9ms.

The SL3-P’s video options are, as you might expect, very similar to those of the Panasonic S1RII. It lacks the ProRes RAW option of that camera (though the 1.3x crop on the Panasonic’s Raw mode means it’s not the camera’s best feature). It also misses out on the waveform display option that the S1RII offers. Realistically, given its lower cost and the inclusion of a fan and more flexible rear screen, the S1RII is a better stills/video camera than the Leica. But, looked at the other way: as a primarily stills-focused camera, the SL3-P has a very broad set of very competent video features.

Autofocus

The Leica’s autofocus behavior is as innovative and unconventional as the rest of the UI.

The camera has three AF area modes, but offers more than three AF areas. The first is called “Spot / Field,” the second is called “Multi-Field / Zone” and the last is called Tracking.

The clue is in the forward slashes. Spot / Field lets you select a single AF point of various sizes, while Multi-Field / Zone lets you choose between an adjustable AF zone and all-area AF, where the camera selects a subject from anywhere within the frame. Once you’ve chosen an AF zone mode, you can adjust it by pressing the AF area on your rear screen or long-pressing anywhere on the live preview. This then lets you use the rear dial to adjust the focus area size.

Like Panasonic’s recent cameras, the camera will track recognized subjects when you have subject recognition turned on, but won’t track non-recognized subjects at all. So you’ll need to turn subject recognition on and off depending on what you’re trying to photograph. We’d definitely recommend configuring a button to do this.

By default, the camera’s Tracking AF mode gives you a small rectangle that resets to the center of the frame at the end of each burst. However, while you can’t change the size of the initial target, you can configure the tracking target to revert to wherever you last triggered it. So, for instance, if you want to track a car down through a series of curves, across your frame, then have the camera jump back to where the next car is likely to arrive, you can.

Autofocus performance

We were pretty impressed with the SL3-P’s autofocus performance. It doesn’t quite match the best of its peers in terms of apparent infallibility, but its subject detection is good and highly tenacious. Close examination showed that, while the camera is very quick to focus on fast-moving subjects and usually very effective at following them within the frame, it’s not always perfect at driving the focus to exactly the correct distance. We used a selection of primes and zooms with the SL3-P and got an excellent hit rate but motorsports felt like they were at the very limits of what the SL3-P can do.

Like the Panasonics, subject recognition is a separate mode from general tracking AF, so you’ll need to toggle in and out of a subject recognition mode if you want the camera to give its best performance for recognized subject types but still be willing to focus track the rest of the time. Interestingly, we didn’t encounter the failure to find focus that we saw very occasionally with the S1RII (though not the S1II, post firmware update).

It’s all a significant step forward for the SL series and helps contribute towards the sense that the SL3-P can handle pretty much anything. It’s only when compared with the very best (often pro-sports tested) systems that it falls a fraction short.

Initial impressions

The Leica SL3-P is the fastest-shooting camera Leica has ever made and should, in principle, be the only SL model they need to persist with. It offers an awful lot of what the SL3 offers, in terms of resolution, and it outperforms the more speed-focused SL3-S.

The subject recognition AF performs impressively well: finding subjects very quickly and following them well (especially when it’s a subject the camera has been trained to recognize). Just as the user interface as a whole takes some getting used to, it’s worth digging around in the menus and familiarizing yourself with the SL3-P’s AF logic before you go out shooting. Without an instruction manual it wasn’t obvious that Leica had grouped its AF area modes, or how to switch between them, nor that you can override the camera’s default behaviour when it comes to AF tracking.

Some issues you can’t overcome, though. The sensor is fast, but it’s not as quick as the best stacked CMOS sensors. So the camera will start showing a slideshow of the images you’ve just shot, when you’re shooting at its fastest rates, making it very difficult to keep pace with the action. Similarly, we were advised to shoot Raw-only and to disengage Content Credentials, to get the best performance.

Richard Butler

And, even with that done, the camera’s approximately 20ms (1/50 sec) readout rates in 12-bit mode mean that rolling shutter will be apparent if you’re trying to follow really fast action.

In this respect it’s a lot like the Sony a7R VI we recently reviewed: very fast for a high-res studio/landscape camera, meaning it’ll handle itself very confidently in a much broader range of circumstances than that. It’s not quite the high-res, high-speed all-rounder that Canon’s EOS R5 II and Nikon Z8 are, but it’ll still be more than enough camera for a very broad range of photographers, taking a very broad range of photos.

The challenge, as ever with Leica, is the price. It’s a beautifully built object, constructed in Portugal and Germany, that wears the Leica name and is likely to sell in relatively small numbers, when compared to the volumes of the large Japanese manufacturers. As such, the price is high.

For that money you get the fruits of some very clever design work, in a body that feels like it’s designed to last decades. However, parts availability and the continued march of technology (we can already see that sensors and AF will continue to get faster), will make it difficult to match the sense of longevity that a Leica film camera gave you. So, as always, part of the calculus comes down to: how important are those five letters to you?

Image quality

Studio test scene

Our test scene is designed to simulate a variety of textures, colors, and detail types you’ll encounter in the real world. It also has two illumination modes, full even light and low directional light, to see the effect of different lighting conditions.

As you might expect, there’s no meaningful difference between the Leica and the Panasonic in terms of detail capture (the very slight difference shows how good the comparison tool is at highlighting the smallest of differences in focus), or for that matter, the Nikon Z8. However, the 66MP Sony a7R VI clearly captures finer detail than its rivals.

A quick check in JPEG mode shows that the default color rendering of the SL3-P is distinct from that of the Panasonic, though, with differences appearing in the blues and caucasian skintone patch, in particular.

Beyond this, there aren’t any real surprises: noise performance is solid in Raw, very closely matching the performance of its peers. JPEG noise reduction looks similar to that of the Panasonic, with what appears to be more sharpening added, by default, to pull out detail. The Auto white balance also looks to be working harder to neutralize the tungsten light used for our low-light mode.

Conclusion

The SL3-P is an inherently difficult camera to review. Leica’s luxury pricing always makes its cameras hard to assess, because the concept of value has a personal component. This is made more pertinent when there are direct, like-for-like rivals at lower prices, and still more stark when some of these less-expensive rivals share significant amounts of their hardware and capabilities.

The SL3-P’s works rather differently from any other camera in its class, despite that commonality with other cameras. Its large, prominent finger and thumb command dials and comparatively small number of other control points, along with the large, relatively uncluttered viewfinder make clear that this is a camera centered on the most fundamental aspects of photography: exposure and composition. Everything beyond that is secondary.

It takes a while to get used to the SL3-P’s way of working, but once you have, and have set up user profiles for your different types of shooting, it’s really quite elegant. It means the SL3-P doesn’t have every possible bell or whistle that its rivals do, but it is refreshingly good at letting you just get on with your photography. And it’s a very capable camera: it delivers a good amount of resolution and dynamic range while also delivering Leica’s best-yet autofocus.

Unexpectedly, for a camera so focused on photography, the SL3-P has a strong video feature set. Swipe on the screen and you find a camera with 10-bit and ProRes 422 capabilities, a false color display for setting exposure and the ability to upload LUTs, either to give a corrected preview or to bake into your footage. It’s hard to tell how many SL3-P buyers will make use of the video capabilities, but those who do are unlikely to be disappointed, except, perhaps, by the battery life.

Richard Butler

Ultimately, though, there’s no getting away from the SL3-P’s price. Those five large, bold letters along the front of its viewfinder hump mean it’s priced unlike anything else on the market. Leica is an exclusive, luxury-priced brand: you either buy into its history, its mythos and its pricing model or you don’t. As the line of cameras with the most direct mainstream competitors, comparison is unavoidable, and it’s implausible, almost to the point of impossibility, that the SL3-P could be objectively so much better than its peers as to justify the price difference on rational grounds. No SL camera could ever be good enough to win over those people that don’t buy into the Leica brand.

Which is a shame as, aside from price, it’s one of my favorite cameras in its class. It’s supremely solid feeling, does a wide range of things very well and feels like a camera designed and developed by people who’ve prioritized photography over technology. But most of us aren’t in the position to ignore the price. And, because our rewards include a consideration of value, we can’t sensibly give it an award. Some people are going to love this camera: probably the best SL camera yet, but we can’t ignore the fact that you can buy a more technically capable camera for half the price.

Scoring

Scoring is relative only to the other cameras in the same category. Click here to learn about what these numbers mean.

Compared to its peers

The Sony a7R VI is the rationalist’s choice, compared with the Leica. It has a similar stress on resolution while still offering very decent speed and video capabilities, but it does so while offering more resolution and slightly better dynamic range. It also has a higher resolution viewfinder and significantly longer battery life, it also uses the best-supported modern lens mount. However, we find it hard to imagine anyone who’s used both concluding that the Sony is better designed or nicer to use.

On paper, particularly in light of the L² technology sharing agreement, the Panasonic Lumix S1RII and SL3-P seem to be extremely similar cameras. In practice, it’s remarkable how different they are to use. The S1R II is covered in buttons and switches and its menus are full of options, whereas the SL3-P is much more pared-back. The Leica is also a fair bit larger and more substantial in the hand. Other than lens mount, using the Panasonic is much more like using a Sony or Canon than like using the Leica. And that user interface philosophy is one of the main distinctive things the SL3-P offers, compared to its rivals. The S1R II isn’t a half-price Leica and the SL3-P isn’t a modified S1R II.

If you’re really into sports photography or video production, the Nikon Z8 or Canon EOS R5 II are probably better choices. Both have stacked CMOS sensors that read out much faster than the Leica’s, meaning less rolling shutter impact in both stills and video shooting. Both also offer Raw video capability and, at the professional end of the market, an extensive pro support network. Both cameras offer a good degree of backward compatibility with their extensive SLR-era lens mounts but also exist in manufacturer-restricted but increasingly extensive lens ranges.

In many respects, the Leica SL3 is the SL3-P’s only direct peer, because it’s the only one that also buys you a Leica. The SL3 has the higher image quality, with a fraction more resolution and dynamic range, but without the video or autofocus performance of the faster SL3-P. The SL3 is perhaps the better choice if you’re primarily a landscape, studio or portrait photographer, but the SL3-P gives you greater flexibility if your shooting is more ad hoc and less prescribed.

Sample gallery

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The Sony RX10 V is an update to the company’s long-zoom large-sensor compact. It’s built around a 20MP stacked Type 1 (116mm²) sensor and a 24-600mm equiv, F2.4-4.0 stabilized zoom.

It’s a long-zoom ‘compact’ whose newfound processing power means it can shoot a range of subjects from landscapes to wildlife and maybe even a little sport. We’d be tempted to make the comparison to a Swiss Army knife, only the RX10 is far from pocketable.

Key specifications

• 20MP Type-1 (116mm²) stacked CMOS sensor
• 24-600mm equiv. F2.4-4.0 lens
• Up to 30fps shooting
• 4K up to 120p with crop (60p full width) in 10-bit
• 3.68M dot EVF
• 1.62M dot tilting rear LCD
• UHS-II SD card slot
• 630 shot/charge battery life rating

The RX10 V will be available in early August with a recommended price of $2,300. This is exactly in line with the US consumer price index inflation rate applied to the $1700 launch price of the RX10 IV, nine years ago. To use a different benchmark, it’s cheaper, relative to the a7 V and that camera’s peers, than the Mark IV was, relative to its contemporary a7 model.

Index

• What’s new
• Body and handling
• In use
• Initial impressions
• Autofocus
• Image quality
• Video
• Conclusion
• Sample gallery
• Specifications
• Press release

What’s new

It’s been eight years since the RX10 IV and Sony has made big steps forward in both technology and ergonomics in the meantime: the RX10 V benefits from both.

On the technology side, the RX10 V gains the Bionz XR processor and “AI processing unit” from the previous generation of Alpha cameras. This brings the full range of subject recognition modes, including birds, animals, cars, planes and the “human pose estimation” system that is designed to recognise people-shaped things in the scene, even when the face or eyes aren’t visible, to help the camera continue to track the same subject.

The added processing power allows the RX10 V to shoot at up to 30 frames per second with a blackout free viewfinder. You also gain the Speed boost function that lets you temporarily engage a faster (or slower) shooting mode, when you hold a customized button down, but you don’t gain the pre-capture function.

Autofocus has come a long way in the nine years since the previous RX10 was released, and the new model feels like a thoroughly modern camera. The other area of significant improvement over the same period is video, and the RX10 V is a bit step forward in that regard, too, with a host of Sony’s latest options including, significantly, the ability to capture 10-bit and H.265 footage, both of which make it more pleasant to work with.

Sony says it’s the same lens as on the RX10 IV but CIPA standards for reporting focal length have apparently changed in the meantime, meaning it’s quoted as a 9.1-210mm zoom, rather than the 8.8-220mm figures printed on the side of the previous two models. We suspect the figures now quoted are the literal focal lengths, rather than the effective focal lengths after corrections has been applied. The end result is the same, though: a 24-600mm equiv range with an F2.4-4.0 maximum aperture and in-lens stabilization.

It’s hard to get your head round just how much flexibility a 24-600mm lens gives you until you use it. There are cameras that offer even more range, but all of them are based on much smaller sensors, so you pay a price in terms of image quality, if any survives the heat haze.

The lens has a built-in shutter which can go as fast as 1/1000th of a second at wide apertures, and 1/2000 sec at F8 and slower. This is great for flash, as you can sync up to those maximum speeds but quickly becomes limiting in bright light. You can switch the camera to e-shutter mode which, with a rolling shutter rate of 15.7ms (1/64sec) is still pretty fast, but this requires you to switch to the lossy compressed Raw format. There’s no auto mode to let you use mechanical shutter up to its limit, then e-shutter beyond that.

Body and handling

Richard Butler

The RX10 V is a substantial camera but that’s to be expected for something trying to deliver a 24-600mm equivalent zoom range. It’s been a long time since we handled an RX10 IV but the grip shape seems improved, offering a sturdy grip on the dense, polycarbonate body.

There’s no front dial, the logic presumably being that you’ll use your index finger for operating the zoom rocker. This means the two command dials on the rear shoulder are both operated with your thumb. There’s also a rather fiddly dial on the rear plate of the camera but thankfully, with the provision of two customizable command dials and an aperture ring, there’s rarely need to use it (it’s not used in photo mode, by default).

Richard Butler

Unlike recent Sony cameras, the RX10 V has a 10Gbps USB-C socket for fast data transfer but then retains the USB Micro B ‘Multi’ socket for attaching external accessories. This can no longer be used for charging the camera, reducing its usefulness to being an accessory port.

The RX10 V still uses a single SD card but the interface now uses the slightly newer UHS-II standard, rather than the UHS-I slot on the previous model. This is quick enough to accommodate the 600Mbps (75MB/s) data rate required for 4K/60 video capture with All-I compression.

Viewfinder

Richard Butler

The viewfinder gets an upgrade to 3.68M dots (1280 x 960px), which is a decent step up from its predecessor. The resolution drops a little if you engage the high refresh rate mode, and battery life drops, too, but whichever mode you choose, the resolution is maintained, even when using C-AF, so you don’t get the potentially distracting drop in detail when you half-press the shutter.

Screen

The screen is also refreshed, with the Mark V using a 1.62M dot (900 x 600px) screen that matches the sensor’s aspect ratio, rather than the 4:3, 800 x 600px panel on the previous model. The screen is still mounted on a tilt up/down cradle, which gives a decent level of flexibility but isn’t well suited to portrait orientation shooting.

Battery

Richard Butler

Other than the improved autofocus, perhaps the biggest change on the Mark V is the move to the much larger NP-FZ100 battery. This is the 16.4Wh battery that has powered the various a7 models for the past nine years. It has a capacity more than twice that of the FW50 battery used in previous RX10 cameras, giving much better battery life in a way that seems appropriate for a camera so likely to be used for travel and long shoots outdoors.

In use

When you first start up the camera, you’re confronted with a very simple, compact-camera display, with five large touchscreen buttons arrayed down both sides of the screen. This ends up feeling somewhat nostalgic, having not encountered a mainstream point-and-shoot for some time, and rather at odds with the more Alpha-styled controls and main menu.

Anyone not wanting to use touchscreen buttons, or wanting a less cluttered display can remove them (the option to do so is under Touch Operation / Touch Panel Settings, rather than with the display options in Operation Customize).

With this done, the RX10 V feels a lot like an Alpha-series camera, with the new menus representing a big improvement over the ones in the previous models. It’s not without its foibles but for the most part it’s well grouped and organized, and with a little customization of the Fn menu and custom buttons, you can minimize your need to visit it.

The RX10 V has the same issue as other Sony cameras in terms of a couple of incompatible settings: you’ll need to disengage Raw and switch to HEIF format before you can engage the camera’s HLG Stills mode to shoot true HDR images, and you’ll have to switch your Raw format if you want to engage the electronic shutter mode. All of which leaves the risk that you forget to switch back.

Richard Butler

Also, somewhat disappointingly for such a travel-friendly camera, Sony remains the only major brand not to offer some kind of in-camera Raw conversion. So if you take a nice shot but want to tweak the white balance, color mode or DRO level before sharing it, tough luck, you’ll just have to messily hack the JPEG around on your phone.

There’s a lot to like, though. The dials and joystick give a good sense of direct control, letting you feel you have direct command over the camera’s really rather impressive capabilities. It has its limits, though: it will try to keep focusing if you zoom with the ring around the lens (you can’t use the zoom rocker), but it definitely struggles, which can limit some sports or action shooting. But the ability to quicky zoom with the rocker under your index finger and fine-tune the framing with the lens ring helps keep the power zoom feeling pretty engaging.

While the RX10 V’s interface is borrowed directly from the Alpha series, its wide range of features and capabilities means it somehow manages to be even more cluttered than on those cameras. So, in addition to the settings and icons that surround all four edges of the screen, there’s a Stabilization indicator that shows up in the main preview, along with warnings about the AF illuminator and a huge “FULL” icon, towards the middle of the display. This has nothing to do with you running out of card space, though; it’s just reporting the essential information that the focus range limiter isn’t engaged.

Initial impressions

Richard Butler

It’s been nine years since the last RX10 model was released and, although things have been pretty quiet on the compact front, the rest of camera technology and performance have continued to make advances. Much like watching a young relative you rarely get to see grow up through a series of infrequent visits, the prolonged gap really makes you notice how much has changed in the meantime.

The RX10 V is a dramatically more advanced camera than its predecessor: faster to focus and much more dependable at subject tracking. The menus and ergonomics have come a long way, too, and its video capabilities are leagues ahead of where the RX10 IV had brought us to.

I’m not generally a fan of long-zoom cameras, as I’d usually prioritize compactness over that additional reach that I rarely find myself wanting to use. But the enhanced AF performance and speed capture add a lot to what was already a camera with a strong following. They vastly expand what the RX10 V can do, and the changes to the controls and battery are significant benefits, too.

Unlike the recent L10, that doubling of battery capacity hasn’t led to much of a change in body size, and it wouldn’t have made much difference anyway, on a body so dominated by that vast lens.

There can be a few delays, here and there, waiting for the lens to initialize, and it was disappointing to have to swap shutter modes (and Raw filetype) or stop down when hitting the 1/1000 sec limit of the mechanical shutter. But overall I’ve found the RX10 V to be a pleasant travel companion whose lens constantly challenged me to think of photos that I couldn’t otherwise take.

Whether that makes it worth $2300 is for each individual to decide, but it’s striking to get to see what nearly a decade’s worth of improvements, delivered all in one go, look like.

Autofocus

The RX10’s autofocus interface resembles that of Sony’s Alpha series ILCs, meaning you get a choice of 11 different AF area modes, which are supplemented with tracking version of each area mode, when you switch to AF-C mode. There’s no longer a switch to select AF-C on the front of the camera (just an AF/MF switch on the lens), but for the vast majority of subjects, you can comfortably leave the camera in AF-C all the time.

In addition to the area modes the camera has its subject recognition system, trained to recognize six different subject types. There’s also an Auto subject mode that will hunt through all its subject recognition modes to see if it can identify your subject. On top of this, there’s the option to select which subject types are included in this Auto mode, to boost both speed and accuracy.

The RX10 V’s autofocus is a big step forward from its predecessor. Faster processing and subject recognition algorithms mean the RX10 V can recognize and track subjects very reliably, and these capabilities extend across to video, in a way they didn’t, before.

However the system isn’t completely flawless: when asked to react quickly with a distant subject, aircraft detection mode didn’t find the planes in the following picture, instead focusing on the Space Needle. Overall, it’s beyond what we’ve previously seen from a compact camera, though.

The fact that it’s awkward to zoom while you’re shooting bursts (the lens ring continues to work but the zoom rocker doesn’t) and the camera isn’t able to maintain focus while zooming puts an upper limit on what you can expect the RX10 V to achieve, in fast-moving situations, but it’s still one of the most sports-capable fixed-lens cameras we’ve ever used.

Image quality

Studio test scene

Our test scene is designed to simulate a variety of textures, colors, and detail types you’ll encounter in the real world. It also has two illumination modes, full even light and low directional light, to see the effect of different lighting conditions.

Unsurprisingly, the RX10 V performs very similarly to the RX10 IV when looking at its Raw images at base ISO, which is a good thing. It captures a good amount of detail, and at 88mm equiv., its lens actually holds up quite well compared to other cameras with Type 1 sensors and lenses with much less ambitious focal lengths. It also provides more detail with less noise than the Nikon P1000, which offers much more reach but uses a lower-res and much smaller 16MP 1/2.3″ (28mm²) sensor.

The RX10 V’s JPEGs are where the decade of progress becomes apparent. The colors are much more pleasing than those of the IV, with more natural skin tones, and the vibrancy of colors turned up where they were lacking, and turned down where they were overbearing. We also found this to be the case in the sample photos we shot with the V. Sony’s progress on this front has been slow and steady, but with so much time between the two models, it’s much more noticeable.

This class of cameras has never been the best pick for low light photography, the RX10 V’s Raws again look as we’d expect. Switch over to JPEG and it’s clear that Sony has upgraded the camera’s noise reduction to some extent, but in higher-contrast, more detailed areas, we’d be hard-pressed to tell its performance apart from its predecessor’s. However, it does outperform Panasonic’s similarly-specced (and now discontinued) FZ-1000 II from 2020 in this regard, and is significantly better at low light than the P1000.

The camera’s reasonably fast F2.4-4.0 maximum aperture means it can maintain good image quality when there’s plenty of light, but it doesn’t take much for the light levels to start chipping into the image quality, as you can see here, where the

Video

The previous RX10 V’s video topped-out at 4K/30, despite the use of a fast, stacked CMOS sensor. The Mark V pushes way beyond this, with the option to shoot 4K/120 with a significant 1.38x crop or oversampled 4K/60 from the full width of the sensor. As you’d expect from a modern camera, this can all be done in 10-bit, making Log, and in particular, the more ambitious S-Log3 curve, much more usable.

Richard Butler

But video improvements over the past nearly decade go further than speed. The RX10 V lets you shoot in the attractive, S-Cinetone color mode and it lets you upload LUTs for previewing your preferred color grade, or to burn directly into the footage. It has Sony’s Auto Framing mode that identifies a subject, punches in and follows them around, upscaling the footage and giving a camera operator dynamism to what are actually locked-off shots. There’s also the Active Mode IS that corrects a wider range of movement, available at up to 4K/60.

Then, on the audio side of things, the RX10 V can capture up to four-channel audio, if you attach an accessory to its multi-interface connectors in the hotshoe. A 72mm filter thread allows you to attach ND filters as needed.

Above all of this, though, the RX10 V’s video also benefits from its improved autofocus system, which is much more tenacious and dependable in terms of subject tracking, especially if your subject is of a type the camera has been trained to recognize.

Conclusion

The RX10 V is an extremely capable all-in-one camera whose extreme flexibility, paradoxically, risks limiting its appeal to a relatively small audience.

It’s a huge step forward from its predecessor, with its updated autofocus in both stills and video, and the addition of an Alpha-style joystick makes it more engaging and usable.

Richard Butler

The AF improvements widen the range of circumstances in which the camera will confidently deliver, expanding its wildlife capabilities and also making sports shooting much more plausible than its predecessor. And this is a case of broadening the horizons of a camera that, with its huge lens range, could already do a lot.

There are some odd quirks, though: it feels strange that Sony didn’t bring its pre-capture mode that would boost its action-capturing abilities. And the lack of a mode that auto-switches shutter mode when the camera hits the upper limit of its mechanical shutter is frustrating (even if it’d mean being stuck in or switching to the lossy Raw mode used for E-shutter).

Some existing RX10 users are likely to miss the top-plate settings display, whereas our bigger concern was that all its command dials are positioned to be controlled with your thumb, rather than thumb and forefinger. But the addition of the joystick and larger battery make for a net improvement, we felt.

The RX10 V’s self-contained nature is very much part of its appeal. You never have to think about which lens to buy or bring with you: you already have a combination that extends from wide-angle to super telephoto. However, to achieve this range means the camera has a moderately sized sensor which, combined with its modest aperture range, puts an upper limit on image quality.

If you need the full breadth of the RX10 V’s features in a single package, it’s genuinely excellent, and it’s hard to think of a more responsive, engaging ‘compact.’ However, if you only need a subset of what the RX10 can do, you may well be able to find a different combination that offers better image quality or an even greater aptitude for sports at a comparable price.

What you won’t find is a camera that offers the RX10 V’s combination of range, capability and size, for the same price. If your shooting needs everything that the RX10 V offers, it’s the only game in town, so for those users, it’s a Gold.

Scoring

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Overall Score

85%

Scores reflect competition at the time of release; cross-year comparisons may be misleading

Expert Summary

The RX10 V is a hugely capable self-contained package that can lend itself to a remarkable range of photography. You probably have to need everything it offers to make its price make sense, but it's perhaps the most flexible 'compact' camera we've ever seen.

Good For:

A bit of (almost) everything

Not So Good For:

Sports, Maximal image quality

Reviewed on August 24, 2026

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Sony DSC-RX10 V specifications