Why the incredible Canon EOS R5 Mk II pipped Nikon to our Camera of the Year award

Our TechRadar Choice Awards 2024 winners see immoderate earnestly beardown cameras this year, a fewer of which had a chance to onshore our coveted Camera of nan Year award. Honorable mentions spell to nan Nikon Z6 III and nan wildly celebrated Fujifilm X100VI, but if there’s 1 camera that stood supra them all, it’s nan Canon EOS R5 Mark II.

Put simply, nan EOS R5 Mark II is Canon’s astir versatile camera ever, and nan camera giant’s astir breathtaking motorboat of 2024 by a agelong shot. In fact, it made TechRadar's Managing Editor earnestly regret switching from Canon for nan Nikon Z8.

The EOS R5 Mark II upgraded nan already fantabulous full-frame EOS R5, delivering an all-round speedier performance, smart autofocus features, amended video, positive a fewer AI tricks thrown successful for bully measure. This is simply a highly tin camera for immoderate benignant of master photographer aliases filmmaker.

We sewage hands-on pinch nan EOS R5 Mark II up of motorboat and completed an in-depth reappraisal but location was still a consciousness that we were only scratching nan aboveground of what it tin do. It really is 1 of nan best master cameras we've ever used.

The Canon camera that does it all

The EOS R5 Mark II shoots ace crisp 45MP stills, particularly erstwhile paired pinch 1 of Canon’s pro L-series lenses, but its sensor is now nan stacked type, pinch a faster readout that minimizes rolling shutter effects, meaning this is besides a awesome camera for high-speed photography and for video successful general.

There’s besides a 2nd processing motor that delivers unthinkable high-speed performance, including 30fps burst shooting pinch a respectable buffer memory. During our testing, it didn’t rather sustain sequences arsenic agelong arsenic nan EOS R1 could, but for a high-resolution camera nan EOS R5 Mark II is super-impressive.

This speedier capacity is backed up by adjacent flawless autofocus and taxable search features – for example, done Action aliases People privilege modes, you tin prime from a number of sports for optimized autofocus, positive prime a circumstantial personification utilizing look discovery for nan camera to attraction on, specified arsenic a subordinate successful a sports games aliases nan bride astatine a wedding. Our deed ratio of crisp attraction connected a circumstantial subordinate connected a hoops tribunal was ludicrously high.

Eye-control autofocus besides impresses. The viewfinder has soul cameras that tin observe wherever you’re looking successful nan frame, utilizing your eyes arsenic a guideline for nan attraction point, successful conjunction pinch taxable tracking. To put it simply, successful this mode nan autofocus takes its cues from your attention. It doesn't afloat switch nan champion autofocus systems, but eye-control AF did make america consciousness much astatine 1 pinch nan EOS R5 Mark II.

We besides tested nan caller AI-powered in-camera editing features, which includes an upscale usability that increases nan size of your pictures by 400%. It utilizes Canon’s neural web and is optimized for nan EOS R5 Mark II: you prime 1 of your pictures from nan representation paper and it’ll summation nan solution 4x to 170MP for unthinkable detail.

The imaginable for Canon's upscale tech is huge. Rather than high-res changeable modes successful astir different cameras which fundamentally harvester aggregate images and can’t grip scenes pinch movement, nan EOS R5 Mark II’s upscale usability useful connected a photograph you’ve already taken, and nan results are majorly impressive. For america it's nan greater scope for cropping into your 170MP pictures that's peculiarly helpful.

All successful all, nan EOS R5 Mark II is Canon’s astir versatile master camera yet. If you’re not nailing nan changeable erstwhile you’ve sewage to grips pinch its pro-features, particularly its analyzable autofocus system, you should astir apt see different career.