Canon Powershot G7 X Summary

Canon G7 X

The Canon Powershot G7 X combines a 20 megapixels 1" CMOS sensor and an ultra-bright zoom lens in a premium compact body. This lets it gather more light than almost any other fixed-lens camera and therefore produce cleaner images.

Image-quality is high, falling closer to a mirrorless than the typical compact. Noise-levels are impressively low with good retention of details. Sharpness is good when stopped down until ISO 1600, before noise-reduction starts eating details and dynamic-range, which is otherwise great, drops. Color and Auto WB could stand to be improved but generally quite good, as is metering.

The Canon G7 X is a responsive digital camera. While autofocus ranges from fast to slow, depending on conditions, the shutter-lag is nearly instant. The 6.5 FPS continuous drive is good for such a high-resolution camera.

The reality is that there are so few competitors to the Canon Powershot G7 X that its imperfections must be accepted as compromises of the form-factor. Any compact with a larger sensor has a fixed lens, which is very limiting. Others with a 1" sensor are either larger, have dimmer lenses, or both.

PROS	CONS
Low image-noise	Strong corner softness
Nice retention of details	Bluish cast in low-light
Good dynamic-range	Slow AF in low-light
Nicely saturated colors	Poor shot-to-shot speed
Reliable and consistent metering	No continuous drive RAW buffer
Instant shutter-lag	Accident-prone controls
Fast AF in bright light	Very short battery-life
Ultra-bright ultra-wide-angle lens	Low LCD visibility in bright light
Class-leading shutter-speed range
Built-in 3-stop ND filter
Excellent Excellent

Neocamera detailed review Read the Canon Powershot G7 X review here.