Panasonic GM5 or Olympus E-PL6 or ?

Helen wrote:

Le Frog wrote:

im45us wrote:

I recently purchased a Panasonic G85 for my wife and have decided to now get my self something. Budget is tight because I have spent about $1700 in the last couple of months on equipement .

I am looking used and small so the 2 cameras mentioned above seem to fit the bill. The GM5 seems to be a well liked camera but have not found it used yet. The E-PL6 is only $160 with 14-42 kit lens refurbished at Olympus but out of stock at the moment. These seem like they would be real pocket cameras with the Panasonic 20mm lens I picked up.

Any other camera fit the bill?

Thanks Ivan

Not exactly in the same league, as far as I am concerned, but still a very good camera (not much of a difference, except in manual controls between it and the EPL7/8), readily available, and at 1/3 of the price of the GM5 the EPL6 seems a no-brainer.

The key words are of course : at 1/3 of the price. Once you omit them the key words are "not exactly in the same league"

Though it's also worth bearing in mind that the E-PL6 is rather older technology - it's an E-PL5 with a handful of software tweaks, so its IBIS is the old 2-axis mechanical type - not a patch on the 3-axis levitation type of the E-PL7 and E-PL8 (and original E-M10), let alone the 5-axis on the E-P5 and all the current OM-D models (and the OP's GX85). Olympus USA's website used to misleadingly indicate that the E-PL6 had 3-axis IBIS - not sure if they fixed that - it most definitely doesn't (I own one, so am 100% sure). It also lacks silent shutter and even 0-second Anti-Shock (which gives the cameras that have it electronic first curtain shutter operation), so this in combination with the 2-axis IBIS sometimes leads to slightly misregistered double imaged edges in some images, in my experience.

Other than that, it's actually a nice camera, though.

The "other than that" was the $160.