G7x III vs Rx100 Mark VII

[kirispupis]

When the G7x3 was announced, I placed a preorder. While I'm not against paying more for the new Sony Rx100 VII, I'm having difficulties seeing any real advantage. The following are the primary needs.

Pri 0 - My son uses it for his YouTube channel. His current biggest concerns are low light image quality and audio quality.
Pri 1 - A carry around camera for Disney parks and other cases where I don't want a larger camera
Pri 2 - Maybe in the future use as an underwater camera with housing. This is a big maybe because I'm not sure if I can obtain the budget for the housing, let alone for a pair of strobes. I currently use an Olympus TG-5 for this.

Our current camera in this space is the Sony Rx100 IV. Our main interest in either camera is due to the external mic port.

The following are what I see as the advantages of the Sony.
- 60 fps 4k vs 30 fps 4k. I don't see this as a big deal because my son currently has yet to exceed 30 fps. He also records everything in 1080P today anyways.
- Has a viewfinder. I almost never use the viewfinder, and my son never uses it.
- Super high speed video. Neither of us ever use this.
- Better AF. I'm not using this for sports or wildlife, so I'm not sure how much this matters.
- Longer lens, but this may be more of a negative. My son has no use for it and the longer lens causes more problems underwater, since as I understand you can't switch macro + wide wet lenses without going back to the surface, which isn't the case for the shorter lens.

The advantages I see of the G7x3.
- Better ergonomics. I cannot stress how much I bitterly hate Sony's menus. I would have sold the Rx100 IV long ago if my son didn't start using it.
- $500 cheaper
- Better perceived image quality. I haven't seen an improvement at all from the Rx100 IV to the VI, and it doesn't sound like the VII improved here either. Therefore, since the Canon has a brighter lens image quality should appear better, even though the sensor quality is the same. However, the Rx100 IV has a similar lens to the G7x3, so I expect the quality to look pretty similar.

Is there something I'm not seeing here? Are there killer video features that I haven't noticed?

 

[Roo]

Not sure about the rest but I picked up a Mk2 last Christmas because I wanted a pocketable camera but also because the matching Canon underwater housing was pretty cheap at half the price of the camera. I had a hands on with the Mk3 yesterday and I think it's just different enough in shape that Canon will have to release a new housing for it.

 

[kirispupis]

I believe you are correct Roo. I contacted SmallRigs in order to have a way to attach the external mic to the camera, since it has no hot shoe, and they stated that the rig for the G7x2 would not fit the G7x3. I assume the same is the case for housings.

 

[Stereodude]

The Sony RX100 VII doesn't have 4k p60.

The G7X III seems to have very weak AF performance. Depending on what your son wants to do I would question if it's going to be at all workable for him.

Other reviews mention that the 1080p from the G7X III is soft.

 

[Stereodude]

...
The advantages I see of the G7x3.
...
- Better perceived image quality. I haven't seen an improvement at all from the Rx100 IV to the VI, and it doesn't sound like the VII improved here either. Therefore, since the Canon has a brighter lens image quality should appear better, even though the sensor quality is the same. However, the Rx100 IV has a similar lens to the G7x3, so I expect the quality to look pretty similar.

How do you figure the Canon will have better image quality? The consensus I've seen pretty much everywhere is that the RX series have better lens quality and sharpness than the G7X II. The review on dpreview of the G7X II noted significant sample to sample variation.

The lens is a big part of image quality and, as with all enthusiast compacts, there is a lot of variation camera-to-camera. Even if your camera has one of the best lenses in the batch, its performance may not be consistent throughout the focal range. One of our G7 X's had good corner sharpness but was soft at its telephoto end, while the second one was just the opposite. We've generally found this lens design, found in both the G7 X and G5 X as well, to be weak at the wider focal lengths relative to the RX100 cameras from Sony.