Canon Powershot G7 X Mark III: A premium compact camera that makes taking photos fun

The Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III is a compact point-and-shoot camera that makes taking photos fun and offers enthusiasts features and image quality that you still can’t get from even the best smartphones.

The new G7 X III sports a 20.1MP, 1-inch stacked sensor, a 24-100mm f/1.8-2.8 (35mm equivalent) along with the most recent revision of the DIGIC 8 image processor and it can now shoot 30fps in its new Raw Burst shooting mode. New video features include 4K at 30fps as well as a 3.5mm mic, a built-in 3 stop ND filter and the ability to live-stream directly to YouTube using the cameras built-in Wifi.

The rear touchscreen can tilt back and flip-up 180 degrees to face you making this an impressive little camera for those thinking about getting into vlogging.

The G7 X III I received for this review is the silver version, but it’s also available in black. I love the styling and combination of black body and silver accents of the dials, buttons and lens. The metal dials on top have a real retro look that I love and they feel solid. They’re good and stiff to turn, so you won’t move them accidentally and the front dial around the lens has a satisfying click when you turn it.

The hand-grip on the front is small, but thanks to the rubber layer wrapped around the camera body, it feels secure and solid in the hand. The shutter button has a decent amount of travel when you half-press it, but to take a shot it takes a nice amount of pressure, which I like.

The touchscreen looks great and is nice and bright, even on sunny days. There’s a Night display mode, which dims the screen and turns the background to black and the text to a dim orange colour.

The menu system is easy to navigate even if you’re new to Canon cameras. The touchscreen is responsive and makes the G7 X III a joy to use from touch focusing on subjects to browsing through your images.

The flash pops-up pretty abruptly and it’s great you can move it towards the ceiling to avoid direct flash if desired. However, there’s no hot shoe or electronic viewfinder and the latter is something I really miss.

The G7 X III is capable of shooting 20fps at the full 20.1mp resolution and if that’s not enough, you can shoot 30fps Raw Burst, but this sacrifices autofocus and exposure metering for speed. This is a novelty feature to play with, but the camera doesn’t have a long telephoto lens, which means it’s not all that useful for either sports or wildlife, two areas where high fps come in handy.

Still images can be saved as RAW, RAW compressed and RAW + JPEG and there’s the option to process the RAW files in-camera. Image quality is excellent overall, as you’d expect from a Canon camera. However, the lens isn’t very sharp at its widest or longest focal lengths and images look softer close to the corners. Stopping the aperture down does improve contrast and sharpness, especially at 24mm.

You can record at 4K at 30fps without a crop meaning that video recorded at 24mm will not get zoomed or cropped in. You can also capture Full HD at 120p for slow-motion output which is popular with some videographers for b-roll.

The battery is rated for 265 images but I was able to get more than that. You can also use a battery bank to charge and shoot while plugged into the USB-C charging port.

Autofocus was generally decent, but I found it struggled in low light. Tracking focus works well and the face detection had no problem locking onto faces and keeping them in focus in my two weeks of testing. However, Canon is working on a firmware update that will improve autofocus performance, which is due out next month.

There’s a lot to like about the Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III, including its 1-inch stacked sensor, retro-style design, build quality and colour science. Priced at €850.