Canon G7X Mark II First Shots: Round 2 for Canon’s Sony RX100-series competitor

by William Brawley

posted Thursday, May 19, 2016 at 1:51 PM EDT

When it comes to the premium compact market, the first direction many photographers turn is towards Sony and their quadruple selection of RX100-series cameras. Sporting a variety of versatile lenses, high performance features and large 1-inch-type image sensors, they offer a lot of image quality horsepower despite their diminutive pocketable design.

Not content with sitting on the sidelines, Canon debuted the PowerShot G7X ahead of 2014's Photokina tradeshow. Featuring a more versatile 24-100mm eq. zoom lens and a large 20MP 1-inch-type sensor, the G7X took aim at these high-end Sony Cybershots. Now, in 2016, the successor Canon G7X Mark II is here and aimed at addressing a few of the downsides to their original model as well as boosting performance. Apart from some external design changes, the Canon G7X Mark II is largely unchanged in terms of sensor and lens compared to the original model. Canon has, however, added a brand new DIGIC 7 image processor -- the first Canon camera to feature this class of processor.

Thanks to the new processor, Canon claims improved noise performance throughout its native 125-12,800 ISO range, as well as other speed improvements. RAW shooters will also be pleased that file quality has been improved here as well, going from 12-bit files to 14-bit.

We've finally gotten our hands on a brand new Canon G7X Mark II and sent it down to the lab ASAP. We now have our standard First Shots set of lab sample images for all you pixel peepers out there. So, how does this new high-end PowerShot compare to its predecessor or the latest Sony RX100 IV camera? Check out a few sample comparisons below, then see the Canon G7X II Samples Page for the full set of test shots spanning the ISO range. You can, as always, compare the G7X II lab samples to any other camera we've tested by using our Comparometer.