agatek wrote:
I own TG-2 that after long time and pretty extensive use started to malfunction in image stabilization. As I was generally happy with TG-2, TG-5 was a natural choice so I bought it. Unfortunately I consider this move a mistake. I don't see any significant/practical improvements comparing to the 3 generation back model.
The camera is a bit lighter and smaller but it feels cheap - the metal housing was replaced by some plastic.
Plastic that is less susceptible to denting, cracking, corrosion, and transmitting shock to the rest of the camera. Probably lighter than metal, too.
The GPS performance and its ergonomy is actually worse than of TG2. Each time the camera is switched off, even with the GPS left on, it needs to look again to get a fix and it takes up to a few minutes. TG2, ones it got the fix could be switched off and back on and the fix was there, The screen showing the GPS position is not there any longer. Also getting the fix after the cold start in general takes more time than for my old TG-2. The GPS features and performance alone is a single thing I would not buy this camera again.
I have my doubts. The TG-5 accesses the U.S.'s Navstar, Russia's GLONASS, and Japan's QZSS systems. I'd want to see some speed tests of both cameras against a modern backcountry GPS unit to check their speed & accuracy.
Perhaps one of the most annoying problems of TG-2 was a very loud zoom motor. TG-5 offers virtually no improvement in that respect. Yes, the motor is a bit less noisy in TG-5 but still very annoying.
It's an internal zoom motor used with an internal mic, housed in a very small camera. Combined with handling noise, I don't know why anyone would expect noise-free operation.
The rest of the features seems similar between these two models except perhaps of 4k recording that I don't use but also didn't manage to perform longer than a few seconds using class 10 SD card.
And yet, the TG-5's video capabilities far exceed that of the TG-2.
Overall, very disappointing. One could expect some improvements towards a 4y old camera of the same serie and some things got actually worse.
That's an odd conclusion. What exactly is worse about the TG-5 compared to the TG-2? Other than your GPS complaint (which I doubt is valid), nothing you said indicates that the TG-5 isn't an improvement.
In addition, there are several features offered by the TG-5 that simply aren't even available on the TG-2; Pro Capture and RAW support come to mind. You didn't even mention some features of the TG-2 that aren't included on the TG-5, so I can't help but wonder if you own either camera.
Also odd that this is your only post on DPR. Ever. This seems more like a hack job than a review from an actual user, but maybe I'm wrong about that.