Canon EOS M6 Mark II review: Our favorite Canon mirrorless camera yet

Ultimately all reviews are subjective. That's the nature of reviewing.

The first thing to realise is that the graphs are designed to highlight areas of strength and weakness, but not necessarily magnitude. They do not start at 0, so the differences may be small. Noticeably, the differences are small enough that the overall numbers end up giving the same overall score, which suggests there's little in it.

The a6400 is better at autofocus than the Canon, without question. It's also a little better in terms of video (though the Fujifilm X-T30 is better again, if that's a focus for you). We felt that the better controls and more responsive touchscreen make the M6 II a nicer camera to use, which we consider important at this level.

However, the fact that our scoring delivered both cameras with an 85 and we concluded that both were worth a Gold award suggests that the margins are very small. Having discussed it collectively, we preferred shooting with the Canon.

@Richard Butler
Fair enough! Thank you for the clarification on the compare tool.
Discussing things collectively is definitely a good measure to even out personal bias to some degree.
That being said, handling/ergonomics certainly depends on prior experiences and habits with camera gear. For example: My first ILC was a Sony Nex5n. I learned the menus and how to get to my preferred settings very quickly and never actually felt the camera was in my way of shooting. A couple of years later I got a Panasonic Lumix and got lost in the menu structure, needed considerably longer to set the camera to my needs. That's most likely because my primary "camera socialization" was with a Sony, everything else felt strange to me.
I am only suggesting that if you guys, even as a collective - got "camera socialized" with gear that worked vastly different than Sony's gear, you might feel "not at home" with Sony's logic of handling.
Of course, if a camera is just sluggish in operation, that's always bad.

I'm 100% on your side with that #@#%#$@# locking mechanism.

He/she adressed it in his comment: what's the benefit of a larger selection of lenses if you can't afford them?

I was already invested into EOS M. That 22mm was my first lens and it has kept me into the system for years!
The touch screen on the X-T30 is painful to use when compared to the canon.
No bounce flash except for a seperate, big flash sold seperately (this is a big)
32 + 56mm on M mount = 1000euro
35 + 56mm on Fuji X= 1500 euro
The clip-on evf of canon is very good quality, I THINK the X-T30 has a lesser quality EVF -but I'm not sure.

That being said, I agree fuji has very interesting options. I was invested AND I like the handling more on the canon, also the price of lenses is a huge difference...what more can I say?

Every time someone says that he likes shooting with Canon (like me) someone jumps in saying "Fuji has more, Sony has more". Well, who cares! After two years with Sony I'm a happy Canon shooter again and I have more fun with my RP (yes, the poor RP) than with my ex-ultratechnological A7RIII. Only the A7III was fun to shoot with. Someone can be happy with Canon, it can happen, get a life.

@Strolic
I find it weird that you had fun with the a7iii, but not the a7riii. They're identical minus the Mpx (file size) and the AF. Were one of those the deciding factor of less "fun"?

If you want a camera without a touchscreen

@mailman
Hard to know here whether you are promoting Sony or Bestbuy in this Canon article......? Desperate 😁

Canon clearly knows what they are doing; they have the experience of the M6 and M5. As someone remarked below, a lot of young users have never experienced a VF but only a smartphone screen.

My guess is that the M6 sold better than the M5. Canon may have run a trial run with those models to see which design to continue iterating.

Most people will not be bothered at all by the detachable EVF. It's a total non-issue. It attaches very well and is high quality.

There are medium format systems with detachable EVFs. See Phase One. The Fuji GFX 50S and GFX 100 both have detachable EVFs. The Leica M series offers an EVF (called a Visoflex) as an accessory to attach, and many M users find that better to use than the rangefinder window.

So are all of those cameras and brand somehow compromised or deficient?

gfx/leica are hardly in the same consumer category as cheap aps-c, and they certainly aren't being purchased by "young users".

those things are not relevant; one does not justify the other.

For me, it's not putting a fully articulating screen on the M6 II. As for the EVF, yes, it'd be nice to have one. However, over this year I've seen a lot of people with the T7i, 6DII, and the R using the rear screen instead of the viewfinder. Since the M6 II isn't aimed at the pro market, I think it makes sense.

sosh - Why do they bother with performance graphs if they are meaningless?

I agree...too much emphasis is put-on graphs and other technical minutiae, when all one has to do is look at the images.

All of the other stuff would be good if we were trying to assess maybe a special type of camera that NASA uses, where they attempt to image something outside of the visible spectrum.

But with our cameras, all we have to do is look at the actual images and trust our judgement. It's stupid to try to use another proxy when we can see for ourselves.

All cameras in last 15 years produce wonderful images, lets not talk about image quality. Lets talk about battery life, usability, performance, controls, built quality and competition...

When comparing directly the images from the competitors , also the MFT, Canon M6 II is the far worst in the image quality. Even at high ISO.

I had the same experience with my Oly PEN and its detachable EVF. In theory, I thought a detachable EVF was a great idea. In practice, I found it annoying. A protruding hotshoe EVF gets caught on things, creates a much taller camera profile, makes it harder to get in and out of a camera bag, etc.. It was inconvenient to take on and off, so I just kept it on. And when I did have it off, there was the concern of keeping track of where I put it and not misplacing it. If you use EVF most of the time, definitely get an integrated EVF. On the other hand, if you use the rear LCD most of the time, a detachable EVF might work for you. At least that's my experience and lesson learned.

The EVF I snot clumsy; it attaches very well.

And one can say the same thing about any camera that any reviewer highly rates; they can't own them all and so by definition most reviewers will not end up using every camera they give high marks to.

Scores and awards are not directly connected.

Then change it!!

unpredictability adds spice to life and camera reviews

I had the same issues and made a decision to take m6 mark II. M6 is faster, more versatile. Lenses are cheaper. I could not imagine I will buy 1.4 or 1.2 lenses for FF. They are very big and expensive. But for m6 there already are 1.4 lenses and they are cheaper, sharp and much smaller.

I also have downloaded for more than 100 RAW files. Mostly I was orientated for high ISO and base ISO where I could see DR. So DR at base ISO are on m6 side. Starting ISO 800 RP files are more flexible and give lower noise levels. On base ISO it was enough DR for RP as well for 99% of pictures. But yes. Pushing 1.5-2 stops and in Shadows there are noise. But it is only for testing because I do not need to push all shadow information all the time.
I also checked my statistics of exif data and have found my 90% pictures are in 100-800 ISO range. FF frame lenses has good prices only with F1.8-2 values. 1.4-1.2 as I wrote are very expensive. So APSC with 1.4 will have almost the same noise levels in the same situations. Everything is compromises and personal preferences.

Binderg agreed with you, Fuji is too overrated,

I used to shoot a Leica M and adopted the glass to my Fuji for a while. Honestly there isn't much in between them sans the price difference. I sold the Leica off as it is quite an investment and I needed to downsize (three kids came along). There are plenty of articles comparing the glass which demonstrate my own thoughts. Your words can't burst my bubble friend, as all you have is a very biased and somewhat ranting opinion which reeks of anger and defensiveness (and a bit disillusioned lol)

Shooting Leica glass adapted on an APS-C body without proper micro-lens setup on the sensor, and not seeing 25% of the frame that the lenses render is not seeing what the Leica glass achieves. Leica's M glass only performs really excellent on Leica's own M bodies. If you want to see what the glass achieves on digital you have to use the native system. Leica M glass don't adapt well, this is common knowledge. And any FF lens on APS-C is like throwing 25% of the character down the drain.

To many, a removable and interchangeable EVF is a positive. I think it is genious.

I suggest not having an inbuilt EVF, compared to cameras that do, is an objective negative.

But for the last year dpreview have been accused as anti-Canon and pro-Sony (e.g., leaving the Canon Eos R out of comparisons). So which is it, please tell me. Or perhaps you are the one who is biased.

@kape06111: I`m not so radical like you, but I agree, that except the increase in Mpixel (what we know, nobody needs) there is nothing special about this camera. At least, from a Fuji or Sony APS-C shooter point of view. If you are in the Canon camp, than for sure this is the best ever APS-C camera...
So the "Gold award" in this case seems to be a cheer up for the Canon fans and maybe a little boost in the Christmas sales. :)

Battery life isn’t something that’s been flagged as a serious issue by other reviewers.

From what I’ve read, it’s about the same as the M6 - not a huge deal in my experience.

Well, in using the camera for two months, I've consistently gotten between 650-1200 images on a single battery...so it's certainly not too bad or anywhere near as poor as the CIPA rating, which uses the flash every other image.

Use a camera before you jump to conclusions.

//Now I can understand that you guys are Canon guys!!//

Weird, I thought we were Sony guys, like, a week or two ago.

"Weird, I thought we were Sony guys, like, a week or two ago."

You guys are controversial Headlines guys. Whatever drives traffic to the site.

Canon don't want to do anything except cater to what market research tells them people want. For this class of camera, there's a lot of people who want the small size and don't care about the EVF, and there's quite a few people who will be happy to have the option of being able to add an EVF. Those two groups are simply larger than the people who won't buy this camera because it doesn't have a built-in EVF.

If I had to pick, I would always choose the EVF over the rear screen. The EVF allows you to compose in bright out door light and you can always do a fast WiFi push to your phone if you need a bigger screen.

50$ adapter gets you every lens ever made by Canon.

Shouldnt really be a deal breaker.

For anything past 50mm, you might as well use the adapter and EF(S) lenses 'cause you gain nothing IQ wise or weight/size wise by having a native lens at that FL. For the wide end, well, the 11-22mm is awesome. 'nuff said.