My wife and I have had six R series cameras – the original R, the R3, two R5s and now two R7s. Only the original R never had a freeze issue. All of the others have frozen at various times. I'll share my highly personal opinion.
1) People who post on this forum that "they" have never had a freeze issue are not helpful. That's like telling someone who has cancer that you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day and don't have cancer. It's irrelevant and, frankly, kinda rude as it can easily be read that someone else's bad fortune is their own fault. Not cool.
2) It is true that with each firmware update the freezes seem to get a little less frequent. For us, they've gone from a real concern to a minor inconvenience, most of the time. Except of course when you spot an incredible bird and you push the shutter button and nothing happens.
3) I've been very sympathetic to Canon once they finally acknowledged the issue (at least, sort of acknowledged it). Initially Canon seemed to be in denial, but with firmware updates they have at least tacitly admitted it is a problem. It is clearly a complex problem that appears to have multiple factors that contribute to it. Anyone who has ever tried to solve any technical glitch knows that the more random the problem is and the more complex the technology is, the harder it is to nail down the cause. The freezes are random and cannot be linked to a single cause or even one or two causes. I am confident that Canon will keep working to narrow down the issue and may eventually figure it out.
4) As for the author's other complaints and the general tone of the article, I kind of think she's full of crap. If the flip screens were prone to coming apart, I am sure we would have seen multiple posts and threads in this forum. Similarly, with her complaint about the flash shoe. How come we aren't hearing about these if they were a real issue. It's a sharp contrast to the freeze issue, which has been discussed many times on this forum as well as on other forums. That makes me doubt that her experience is anywhere near common.
5) In terms of durability. Well, I have dropped my R5 at least twice. Both times I got confused as to which camera I had hanging from my neck and let go of the wrong body. Once, it landed on a hard marble floor in the state capitol while I was on a job. The second time was just last week when it made a soft landing on grass. I take good care of my cameras, but they still get a fair amount of banging about. Last summer I lost my balance while getting up and came crashing into some rocks. The only damages to the cameras was a broken eyecup on the R3 which Canon replaced at no charge when I sent the body in for a clean and check (Yay CPS Platinum!) It's just a fact of life that when you do sports and event photography and when you take trips to photograph birds and wildlife the cameras get knocked about. I've found all the R bodies to be at least as durable as Canon's DSLRs.
6) As someone who started as a journalist, I resent the phony equivalency that threads through this article. The author took a known issue (freezing) and conflated that with her unique experiences. She then concludes that Canon has a general durability problem, ignoring the fact that the only real and documented issue (freezing) has absolutely nothing to do with durability. She conveniently ignores the strong likelihood that the durability issues she experienced are much more likely to be the result of how she uses or misuses her cameras.
