So, while almost everything has been said, and people who needed to, just found what they wanted, I still add something, more technical wise...
Body, design, ergonomics:
The camera just fits in bigger pocket, so It´s the one of those pieces with nice mix of features, while you really can carry it around, and not miss the oportunity. That was main buying reason for me. On the contrary, while it´s pocketable, I think that lens is fragile in a way of covering it against scratches. The automatic lens cover is loose and soft, and cannot be used as lens armor. Bad thing about it is, that this cover is only up to one milimeter far from the lens glass top, when closed. So when you hit it, you even scrath it with its cover, which is stupid. Too bad. It needs further solution.
Camera body is small-ish, so it is not pleasure to handle its well placed buttons. I like those buttons and handy hardware settings tweakers, but it just does not fit in my medium hands well. Nikons (P7700 and 7800) are way better in this, but it´s not pockerable anymore. Otherwise it feels very well made and totally solid. Battery cover is not poor, everything is sturdy, dials do have nice and strong and exact step resolution.
Features: You can find those in every review, I just wish that this cam could do 60FPS 1080p video, and some creative, stronger handheld HDR. But it´s still good for its main purpose. I like highlights when reviewing, so you know how was your exposure. This machine just works good, and has everything what it really should have.
Lens:
That bright lens is awesome, letting me shoot darker situations "as a champ". In fact, it can beat older lower priced DSLRs (Like EOS 400D which I had) with kit lens in many situations. While this cam has good IS and fast lens, you can gain full five stops of light over DSLR with poor optics, so it will lower your chosen ISO speed very often. To compare, there might come situation, when you find yourself shooting at ISO 3200 with DSLR, but this cam still should go as low as ISO100! On bright light, DSLR will win anyway. So, don´t be so happy about all that chances for this compact cam I arranged....
Focal range of is somehow forced to be as it is, the same as aspect ratio of not so well chosen 4:3. That is due to keeping lens and whole camera as small as possible. No other way around this. When you change your aspect ratio, you can loose few megapixels of image. This is the price for small camera with bright lens and better focal ranges, compared to shorter focal ranges made by other camera companies, and you have to pay it. I found that additional 60mm of Nikon P7800 will not help much in exchange for camera size, so it is not that bad, but It´s maybe a bit selfish, because I also found Panasonics LX7 and Oly´s XZ-1 and XZ-2 like totally unusable and short range.
The image straight from RAW is not THAT sharp with this lens, as it is with so compared Nikon. It looses some detail at lower ISOs against Nikon, and also Olympus XZ-2, while wins over XZ-1 and Panasonic. Anyway, it´s pretty fine line, nothing huge. It needs to make some aditional sharpening, but definitive results are great.
Iris in that lens has six shaped blades. When you shoot full open, you get nice round bokeh. This is not easy to achieve, because you get just BLURRED scene at out of focus part of image almost everytime, not instant bokeh. You will have to work hard to take a photo with nice bokeh. As you decrease aperture and iris closes, bokeh turns to be more "cheap" hexagon, as you can se below.
Bokeh at wide open f/1,8.
Bokeh of around f/5.
Sensor and processor: It copes very well. In well controlled situations, there is possibility to shoot at even ISO 6400 when processed and resized. I am very happy about those results. Compared with DPR review of G16, it does not loose anything about IQ in my eyes, maby this one is better. While you examine it at full scale, it obviously looses A LOT of detail, but I think overall its very good result, and I have a reason to be happy about it.
That pattern on the bottle is real, not part of noise
While that small sensor is connected with fast optics, I´d want to show you what else can it do. It can do macro. But not just macro. It is MACRO! And not only that it focuses from 1cm, it can have VERY shallow depth of field. Se for yourself:
While those are just benchmark photos, not bothering about exposure, I like what I see and what this pocketable camera can do. It can definitely go beyond some of RX100 and other enemy capabilities, so this is not just cheaper alternative, called like that by so many uneducated people, who never owned it. It has it´s own set of features and capabilities. You really need to decide, which of those you want. If you want macro, moderate size, fast lens with medium focal ranges, well, there is G15 and G16.
Viewfinder: while it´s poor and I can see lens protruding into image at wide angle, it has some paralax and cropping issue, I still do like it more over EVFs. It´s somehow more accurate for darker and faster scenes also, and I use it happily.
Battery life: While it can do many shots, and I´m happy with it, you can run in some trouble:While it´s photographers camera, you need to play with it, recompose often. That way camera display runs for long time, draining battery much faster than just when shooting around. So If you´re gonna play with it or do serious work, get at least one spare battery. It´s a must.
Image output: While it can make some mistakes with JPEG output, it does produce very pleasurable images overall. When processed, I love it. That small sensor with bright lens can do A LOT. It definitely delivers...
Only problem I had was landscape shooting. While it can do accurate and nice sharp photos of people or products, it somehow lacks with plants. Don´t know if it´s sharpening or what, but it does not do well really.
Resopnsiveness: This thing is snappy. Definitely good in good light, can sometimes lack it totally bad scenes. It just is not a DSLR. I´m very happy with it´s accurate and fast mettering.
Overall: While I can find some quirks, like rare focus hunting, questionable quality about landscape photos, and I still somehow look around, searching if I really did good choice, I end up finding nothing better for my purposes every time, mostli hitting the wall of maximum size in price range, and actually happy about that cam.
Hope my latter review helped a bit at least!
