Point-and-shoots may have gone the way of the dinosaur, but there are still people who appreciate a compact, dedicated camera – a niche that fixed-lens, 1-inch sensor shooters have been filling very capably. If you’re looking for the most camera you can get at a size that resembles your trusty point-and-shoot from a decade back, the Canon G9X might just be the new pocket stuffing you’ve been waiting to come along.
Measuring 3.9 x 2.3 x 1.2 inches, it’s as compact as it gets for a 1-inch sensor shooter, maximizing image quality while skinning it in the smallest possible footprint. At the size, it should fit comfortably on a pants pocket, so you can keep your camera on the left and your phone on the right – the same way it used to be before phone cameras got halfway-decent enough for people to choose them over a dedicated point-and-shoot.
The Canon G9X uses a 20.2-megapixel, backside-illuminated CMOS image sensor and a DIGIC 6 image processor, giving it a sensitivity range of ISO 125 to 12,800 equivalents. While that’s exactly the same as the rest of Canon’s G series, it has a less-powerful 3X optical zoom lens with 28-84mm equivalent focal length range and a maximum aperture that falls from f/2.0 to f/4.9, a tradeoff that was necessary to enable the smaller size. Around the back sits a 3-inch touchscreen LCD (720 x 480 resolution) that’s completely flat and affixed to the body, so no tilting and swiveling (sorry to the selfie-obsessed dude) like with the rest of the line.
Slated to ship in the last week of October, the Canon G9X is priced at $529.99.