Olympus E-M10 II Performance

Excellent performance for its class, with incremental improvements over its predecessor.

Startup time including taking a shot was very good for a mirrorless camera at about 0.8 second, and improved over the E-M10's 1.3 seconds. Switching from Play to Record mode and taking a shot was also quite good and slightly improved at about 0.5 versus 0.6 second.

The Olympus E-M10 II's full-autofocus shutter lag in single-area AF mode (center AF position) was only 0.157 second when tested with M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 ED lens. That's much faster than average for a mirrorless ILC and competitive with prosumer DSLRs. (The E-M10 tested at 0.234 second with the 14-42mm II kit lens so it appears AF speed has improved, but we can't say by how much as different lenses were used.)

Full autofocus shutter lag increased to 0.383 second with the flash enabled, to account for the additional delay for the preflash metering, however that's still quite fast and slightly improved over the E-M10's 0.397 second.

When manually focused the E-M10 II's shutter lag time was 82 milliseconds, very fast and improved over the E-M10's 96 milliseconds. The E-M10 II's prefocused shutter lag time of 60 millisecond was quite quick, and again slightly improved over the E-M10's 66 milliseconds. Note that the type of lens used usually makes no difference for these two measurements.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance.

Single-shot cycle times were excellent for its class at just under 0.5 second for best quality JPEG and RAW+JPEG files versus about 0.6 second for the E-M10. We no longer test just RAW file cycle time in single-shot mode, as it's usually somewhere in between JPEG and RAW+JPEG.

Continuous H mode performance was quite good, at about 8.3 to 8.4 frames per second depending on the file type. That's marginally improved over the E-M10's 8.1 fps and very close to the E-M10 II's 8.5 fps specification. Note that focus and exposure are fixed at the first frame of a burst in this mode. There is also a "low speed" mode rated at up to 4.0 fps (up from 3.5 fps) which supports continuous AF and exposure, however we didn't test that mode in the lab.

Buffer depths when shooting JPEGs were improved though still not exceptional, at 25 frames for Large/Super Fine JPEGs and 14 frames for RAW+JPEG versus 19 and 10 frames for the E-M10 respectively. Buffer depth with just RAW files was identical to the E-M10, at 15 frames. Buffer full frame rates were however markedly improved: The E-M10 would slow down to under a frame per second with a full buffer, while the E-M10 II managed about 3.7 fps when shooting JPEGs, 2.6 fps with RAW, and 1.5 fps with RAW+JPEG files. Be aware that our test target for this was designed to be difficult to compress, so JPEG burst lengths should be longer with typical subjects.

Buffer clearing times were good and very similar to the E-M10's, ranging from 5 seconds after a burst of 25 LSF JPEGs to 9 seconds after a burst of 14 RAW+JPEG frames with a fast 95MB/s UHS-I card, and you can take additional shots and adjust settings while the buffer is still clearing.

Built-in flash recycle time was a bit sluggish at an average of 4.0 seconds after full power discharge.

Since the E-M10 II is UHS-II compliant, we also tested continuous mode with our SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-II SDHC card, and here are the results:

Switching to a UHS-II card sped up the average burst rate slightly to about 8.9 fps but more importantly, it generally increased buffer depths by a few frames and reduced buffer clearing times by a few seconds, though buffer depth for RAW+JPEG mode actually reduced by one frame. Buffer-full rates also improved significantly (almost doubling), so it's clearly worthwhile to use a fast UHS-II card with the Olympus E-M10 II.

Bottom line, the Olympus E-M10's performance was already very good for its class and the E-M10 II only improves on it, if only slightly in some cases. The E-M10 Mark II offers faster startup, faster autofocus, lower shutter lag, slightly improved cycle times and better burst performance compared to its predecessor.

Battery Life
Slightly below average battery life for a mirrorless camera.

The Olympus E-M10 II uses a custom BLS-50 rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and charger. The rated 320 shots per charge (Olympus makes no distinction between using the EVF or LCD monitor) is a bit below average for a mirrorless ILC, but well below the capacity of most DSLRs with their optical viewfinders. We recommend getting a second battery for your E-M10 II if you plan any extended outings.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))