The dreaded "can you recommend me a good camera"?

DPR gave it a severe mauling but Cameralabs who are a better much source for this level of camera give it a highly recommended. As I said look around and then make the decision.

That "highly recommended" sounds like an overall judgment and not a report on lens quality.

One very plausible explanation for substantially different assessments of the lens from different reviewers is that type of poor quality control known as sample variation. I discussed that issue and noted that it had been widely acknowledged with the Canon S100 in a prior post in this thread (https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/61779863).

IMO if any serious reviewer reaches conclusions the differ substantially from other serious reviewers' conclusions, then obtaining another sample and testing should be done. If the two test much different from each others, then a larger sampling--maybe four or five, obtained from different sources--would be a good idea. Not saying I expect this to become the norm. But DPReview does sometimes do it, and about the S100, the review says:

Sample variation

Sample variation is a fact of life, sadly, and as we've already reported, we have used several S100s during the course of our testing. Working through our standard studio tests we found moderate to serious optical issues with three of them - significant enough, given the high quality of samples that we'd seen elsewhere, to give us pause (and to delay the process of completing this review).

We have now used five cameras, with lenses that span a range in terms of optical quality. The best sample offers good, uniform sharpness in all environments in which we used it, and the worst gives noticeably soft results on one side of images taken in the critical environment of our studio, but delivers perfectly acceptable results in 'real world' shooting.

See https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canons100/5 (emphasis added).

So what I'm suggesting is that the G9X and G9X II may suffer from substantial lens sample variation, with some of them not good. Or maybe it's just not a very good lens. As to how much that matters ...

The whole thing in these sites is if a camera has a softer lens than another camera then it has a soft lens and the better camera has a sharp lens even if differences are such that most people would hardly notice and the less soft lens has less than perfect resolution itself. All these camera have software chicanery to get the best out of the compromised lenses, The G9X is all about performance for size and price I think mediocre really writes off this camera as any sort of choice and does not equate with the camera I have.

Well if all you ever do it look at pictures on a phone or webpage, then why even get a larger-sensor camera? It would be money (and size) not well spent. IMO the reason to get such a camera is largely because from time to time you'll want to make high-quality prints in larger sizes. And having a good lens is essential for that purpose. If another, similar camera has a significantly-better lens, then IMO and for me, it is a better choice.