Today I had a chance to hold a number of mirrorless cameras side-by-side and play with them for an hour or so: Canon EOS-RP, Canon EOS-R, Nikon Z7, Nikon Z6, Fuji X-Pro2, X100F, and a number of Fuji X-T models (plus many Sony/Olympus/Panasonic/etc I don't care much about). Here are my observations:
The Canon EOS bodies had by far the best build quality and they felt very solid and ergonomic in my hand. The top-panel LCD on the EOS-R is a nice feature and looks beautiful. The Canon EOS-RP body is a bit short, though, and I see the need for the available extension grip. The EVF was the best in terms of size, response (refresh rate and flicker), contrast & brightness, and the eye relieve was much larger than any of the other cameras. However, even though customers only had a few hours to play with these cameras, the plastic lens barrel was already broken and had a wide crack with sharp plastic peeling off! How come my Leica and Nikon AI-S lenses are decades old and work like new, and this lens didn't survive a few hours inside a store?!? The lens had trouble locking focus, but maybe this was because the lens barrel had a crack. Plus, the lens looked HUGE for the small bodies. What I hated is that the ON/OFF wheel is on the left of the bodies, so you need both hands to turn the camera on! What was Canon thinking?!
The Nikon Zs felt very solid, too, but the design and arrangements of the buttons didn't seem very natural and the bodies didn't feel as ergonomic in my hands as the Canon bodies.
The Fujis were surprisingly small, especially the X-T models. In fact, too small for my hands to feel comfortable. To my surprise, the optical viewfinder of the X-Pro2, X100F did nothing for me because they lacked frame lines, so I had no clue what I was framing and what would end up on the photos, and there was no other info in the optical viewfinder such as exposure time, f/stop, etc. Plus, I had no clue what the lens focused on until I looked at the photos on the display at the back. I thought to myself "Why am I even looking through this OVF if its adding zero information?" I thought maybe it was operator error and I need to add some electronic info somewhere in the menus? I gave up going through the menu after 10 minutes because I didn't find anything. Very odd. When I switched to the EVF, I found it rather small, the resolution was not very high, the contrast low and not bright enough. Plus, when flipping from OVF to EVF, they didn't match and the images jumped. Very disappointing. The zoom lenses that were mounted on the X-T had a huge lag when I zoomed in & out which felt very unnatural, and the zoom speed was not linear, it accelerated while zooming. Very weird! But I loved the small sizes of the lenses, which matched the body sizes nicely.
To me, the Canon EOS-R was the clear winner, followed by the EOS-RP. But the poor build quality of the (huge!) lenses worries me a lot because the lens that was mounted was already broken. I never had a Canon camera in my life but I think I'm ready to switch because Canon did an outstanding job with these mirrorless cameras!
