Canon introduces a new sensor size into its product line with the enthusiast-targeted PowerShot G7 X: like Sony's RX series of advanced compacts, the G7 X features a 1-inch BSI (backside illuminated) sensor. At $700 (£580, approximately AU$775) the G7 X is only about $100 less than then its big brother, the G1 X Mark II -- even less in Australia -- and that gap will probably narrow as the months go on.
The G7 X has some features that are welcome in the G X line, most notably a fast 24-100mm f1.8-2.8 lens with a 9-blade aperture and a flip-up touchscreen display. With great photo quality for this class and a streamlined shooting design, the camera fares well against its Sony competitors. Unfortunately, weak performance holds it back.
Image quality
Photos look excellent, and video quality is fine for most casual use. The G7 X uses a 1-inch Sony sensor -- apocryphally the same one as the RX100 III -- and it's interesting to see what the photos looks like paired with a different lens and image-processing software. The answer: a bit sharper with better white balance and more detail in the shadow areas.
The G7 X's JPEGs look relatively clean through ISO 400, though at ISO 400 you can see the noise reduction kick in little; by ISO 800 noise and detail degradation starts. Still, the JPEGs, depending on scene content, are OK through ISO 3200. Using raw increases that to ISO 6400.
Canon's white balance is generally pretty accurate, though as frequently happens, I had to manually switch it from auto to Cloudy or Shade to get correct colors in those conditions. The defaults tend to push the color saturation a lot more than I like, and unfortunately, the Neutral color setting isn't available when shooting raw or raw+JPEG.
It has a decent tonal range for its class, delivering reasonable highlight detail and only clipping shadows a little. There's also a surprising (for this type of camera) amount of detail recoverable from highlights and shadows in the raw files without introducing artifacts.
Video quality, even in low light, is quite good; a little better than the RX100 II's but not as good as the XAVC S-codec video out of the RX100 III.
