Panasonic LX10 Review

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Basic Specifications
Full model name:	Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10
Resolution:	20.10 Megapixels
Sensor size:	1 inch (13.2mm x 8.8mm)
Lens:	3.00x zoom (24-72mm eq.)
Viewfinder:	No / LCD
Native ISO:	125 - 12,800
Extended ISO:	80 - 25,600
Shutter:	1/16000 - 60 sec
Max Aperture:	1.4
Dimensions:	4.2 x 2.4 x 1.7 in. (106 x 60 x 42 mm)
Weight:	10.9 oz (310 g) includes batteries
Availability:	11/2016
Manufacturer:	Panasonic
Full specs:	Panasonic LX10 specifications

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20.10 Megapixels	3.00x zoom	1 inch size sensor

LX10 Summary

The Panasonic LX10 combines a fast 24-72mm equivalent built-in lens with a 20.1-megapixel 1-inch-type sensor to yield very good results for a premium compact camera. The image quality is comparable to its peers, but where the LX10 manages to set itself apart is through its usability and features list. Thanks to its touchscreen display and great user interface, the LX10 proved very enjoyable to use. Add in its 4K UHD recording and 4K Photo features, and you have a full-featured compact camera that is available for well under $700. The Panasonic LX10 is an excellent value and a good performer across the board.

Pros

Very good image quality for its class; Compact, sleek camera body; Excellent touchscreen and user interface; Fast built-in lens; 4K UHD recording and 4K Photo.

Cons

Continuous autofocus performance is spotty; Shallow RAW buffer depth; No built-in electronic viewfinder; No hot shoe; Slow start-up time.

Price and availability

Available since November 2016, the Panasonic LX10 currently costs just under US$650.

Imaging Resource rating

4.5 out of 5.0

Panasonic LX10 Review

by Jeremy Gray, Zig Weidelich and William Brawley
Preview originally posted: 09/19/2016

Updates:
10/31/2016: First Shots posted!
11/22/2016: Field Test posted!
01/06/2017: Performance test results posted
03/07/2017: Image Quality Comparison and Print Quality posted
03/08/2017: Review Conclusion posted

There’s a new entrant in the highly competitive 1" sensor travel camera market, the Panasonic LX10 (also known as the LX15 in some regions and LX9 in Japan). This premium compact camera combines a 20.1-megapixel 1"-type sensor with a Leica-branded 24-72mm equivalent lens that has an impressive f/1.4-2.8 maximum aperture.

Panasonic LX10 offers a seamless, premium body and clean design

Panasonic has placed an emphasis on creating a compact camera with a premium feel and high-quality construction and design. Aimed at enthusiasts, the LX10 has a relatively large aperture control ring around the lens. There’s also a control ring which can serve as a focus ring. On the top deck of the camera body is a rear dial. Both the control ring and rear dial’s default functions change depending on the shooting mode of the camera but can be customized to provide control over settings such as zoom, ISO, Photo Style and more.

The body itself is described as a “seamless metal body” and its rings and dials are constructed of knurled aluminum. To ensure the seamless construction, the top panel is actually a part of the camera’s front panel, which in addition to providing a cleaner look also makes the camera stronger. (As an interesting aside, despite its complex shape, the LX10 front/top panel is press forged rather than injection molded, which is unusual.) The camera is quite small with dimensions of 4.15 x 2.36 x 1.65 inches (105.5 x 60 x 42 mm) which makes it slightly smaller than the Canon G7X II and slightly larger than the Sony RX100 IV. With a battery and memory card installed, the LX10 weighs in at a light 10.9 ounces (310 grams).

The top deck of the camera has a clean, well-organized layout. On the left is a manual pop-up flash and on the right is the mode dial, shutter release, zoom lever, movie record button and the rear command dial. The mode dial has intelligent auto, program, aperture priority, shutter speed priority, manual, movie, and custom modes in addition to a few more creative options, such as panorama, scene and creative control modes. Like the Canon G7X II and Sony RX100 V, there's no flash hot shoe. And unlike the RX100 V there's no built-in EVF, with no provision for an external viewfinder.

The rear of the camera is dominated by the LX10's 3-inch tilting LCD monitor. The 180-degree tilting display has 1,040K dots and touchscreen functionality. To the right of the display there are ten buttons, including five for navigation (four directional buttons and a central 'set' button). Around the outside of the directional buttons are four circular buttons including playback and Quick Menu buttons. There's a 4K Photo button located on the top right of the camera's back. The four directional buttons also serve as focus mode, exposure compensation, white balance and drive mode.

Fast built-in lens hopes to separate the LX10 from the competition

The built-in optic has an actual focal length of 8.8-26.4mm which provides a 35mm equivalent focal length of 24-72mm. This is as wide as the RX100 V and slightly longer while it’s shorter at the telephoto end than the G7X II. The lens has a very fast f/1.4 aperture when shooting at 24mm and a still good f/2.8 maximum aperture at 72mm.

The LEICA DC VARIO-SUMMILUX-branded zoom lens is in a six-component configuration which Panasonic has designed to be compact despite the f/1.4 max aperture. Constructed with 11 elements in 9 groups, the 24-72mm equivalent lens has four dual-sided aspherical elements, two dual-sided aspherical ED elements and one UHR (Ultra High Refractive) element to help control chromatic aberration even when wide open.

One of the main features of the Lumix LX10 is its emphasis on creating high-quality bokeh. The bokeh results are stated to be achieved via a "unique lens mold technology." Compact camera lenses can struggle with creating smooth bokeh, with out of focus areas often displaying lines and sharp edges. The Panasonic LX10 attempts to better replicate the soft bokeh most often seen in larger interchangeable camera lenses.

The lens' iris is a 9-blade design with a minimum aperture of f/11 across the zoom range and while there is no built-in ND filter, at least the LX10 has an electronic shutter with a top speed of 1/16,000 second (the mechanical shutter tops out at 1/4,000 second).

Macro shooters will be interested to hear that the Panasonic LX10 can focus as close as 3 centimeters (~1.2") at the wide end of the lens, compared to 5cm for the RX100 V and G7X II.

The Lumix LX10 features what Panasonic calls 5-axis Hybrid OIS+ which combines sensor-shift image stabilization with optical image stabilization. When recording 4K and high-speed video, the lens provides the only stabilization.

Overall this is a very interesting built-in lens due to its fast f/1.4 aperture at 24mm and Panasonic’s design philosophy of creating a lens that is both sharp and capable of rendering pleasing out of focus areas in an image.

20.1 megapixel 1-inch sensor continues to be a sensor of choice

The 20.1-megapixel 1-inch sensor is a Live MOS sensor. Compared to the 1/1.7-inch sensor found in the LX7, the LX10 doubles the megapixels, has about three times larger effective image area, 1.6 times larger pixels and an additional stop of high ISO sensitivity. Speaking of ISO sensitivity, the Panasonic LX10's native ISO range is 125-12,800 and it can be extended to 80-25,600.

LX offers Lightspeed AF and post focus feature

Autofocus is provided by Panasonic’s Lightspeed-branded AF system which incorporates the company’s depth from defocus (DFD) technology. The DFD tech calculates focus areas from a maximum of 49 areas. In addition to the 49-area autofocus mode, the LX10 also offers face/eye detection, tracking, custom multi, 1-area and pinpoint focus modes. You can also utilize the LX10’s touchscreen display for selecting the focus area. Additional focus features include focus peaking, low light AF and Starlight AF.

In addition to its standard assortment of autofocus features, the Panasonic LX10 offers post focus and focus stacking as part of the camera's 4K Photo features. For those unfamiliar with 4K Photo, it leverages the 4K-capable performance of a Panasonic camera and produces 4K still images (8 megapixels) from 4K video shot at 30 frames per second. Post focus is a neat feature which allows you to select the focus area after shooting a burst of images with a shifting focus distance. After shooting, you select the desired focus area and thereby select a single frame from the burst. On the other hand, focus peaking combines the 4K Photo frames into a single image with greater depth of field.

Panasonic hopes the LX10 is user-friendly yet powerful enough for enthusiasts

The Panasonic LX10 comes with a standard assortment of shooting modes, including both fully automatic and fully manual shooting modes. Exposure metering is provided via Intelligent Multiple, center-weighted and spot metering options and exposure compensation of up to +/-5 EVs is available. There is also AE bracketing available with a max of +/- 3 EVs with 3, 5 and 7 shot options. In addition to exposure bracketing, there is also aperture, focus and white balance bracketing available.

Photo Styles include standard, vivid, natural, monochrome, scenery, portrait and custom varieties. For adding a bit more creativity to your images, you can also utilize Creative Control. Creative Control provides users with a variety of filters that can be applied to images, such as expressive, retro, old days, silky monochrome and much more. In total there are 22 creative control mode filters.

I already touched on some of the focusing features available via 4K Photo, but you can also shoot 4K Photos in an assortment of burst modes. 4K Burst lets you capture 4K Photo frames (8 megapixel images) at 30fps for a maximum of 15 minutes. 4K Burst S/S is similar but starts and stops when you press the shutter release. Finally, there's 4K Pre-Burst which constantly records but saves only the 30 frames preceding and following your shutter press.

Speaking of burst modes, the Panasonic LX10 can shoot full-resolution 20-megapixel frames at up 10 frames per second with single-shot AF, and at up to 6 fps with continuous AF. Buffer depth is quite generous when shooting best quality JPEGs at 80 frames according to our tests, but when shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG frames, the buffer depth drops to 14 and 13 frames respectively. A Super High-speed mode shoots 50 fps using the electronic shutter, but at a much lower 5-megapixel resolution. See our Performance page for details.

4K video, live cropping and more provide a strong features list for LX10

4K video is a big part of Panasonic's offerings with the LX10. In addition to standard 4K UHD video recording at 30fps, the camera also provides users with 4K Live Cropping. By utilizing the full 3840 x 2160 4K UHD frame, you can pan and zoom a Full HD crop around the 4K frame. While the camera is in a fixed position, you can use touch to move the 1080p frame around the 4K frame, creating a 1080p video file with smooth panning or zooming.

Full HD video has additional features besides Live Cropping including slow motion video and 5-axis image stabilization with tilt correction. You can record Full HD video at 120 frames per second. 5-axis Hybrid OIS+ compensates for five types of movement of course but the LX10 can also automatically keep your video footage level by utilizing its built-in sensor that detects if the camera is tilted.

4K videos are recorded at 30p or 24p in MP4 format and have a 15 minute time limit per recording. Full HD video is available at 60p, 24p or 60i in AVCHD format and at 60p or 30p in MP4 format, and HD is available at 30p in MP4. AVCHD has a time limit of 29:59 but MP4 format at Full HD or HD resolution is not time limited (other than by card capacity or by internal temperature). High-speed Full HD videos are recorded at 120p and play back at 30p, in MP4 format.

The best of the rest: Assorted features, ports and battery life

Other features of the LX10 include Panasonic's distinct Live Composite mode. This mode allows you to combine multiple exposures into a single frame, such as consecutive shots of fireworks, by automatically superimposing the brightest parts of up to 40 selected frames. There is also range merging. This mode allows you to easily shoot light painting by superimposing the brightest parts of frames in between selected first and last frames.

If youd rather artificially light your night scenes, the LX10 has a built-in flash that is rated with a nearly 40-foot range (12.1m) at the wide end of the lens and a roughly 20-foot (6m) range at the telephoto end with Auto ISO. The LX10 also includes Clear Retouch, in-camera RAW processing and built-in Wi-Fi functionality.

The Panasonc LX10 relies on SD/SDHC/SDXC cards for recording images and videos with support for UHS-I types. The camera includes a built-in stereo microphone and a mono speaker. Ports include Micro-HDMI Type-D and USB 2.0 Micro-B. You can utilize the USB port to charge the camera, meaning you don’t need to remove the Li-ion battery pack to charge it. The Lumix LX10's battery is rated for 260 shots (CIPA standard) per charge.

Pricing and availability

The Panasonic Lumix LX10 began shipping in mid-November 2016 for a suggested retail price just under US$700.

Panasonic LX10 Field Test

There's a new premium compact on the market and it's excellent

by Jeremy Gray | 11/22/2016

Introduction
The premium compact camera market is as crowded as ever and all its combatants bring to the table distinct features on top of very similar 20.1-megapixel 1-inch type sensors. In a market where usability and features make or break a camera, the Panasonic LX10 offers a lot to be excited about. It has a very sleek, functional camera body; tilting touchscreen display; fast 24-72mm eq. f/1.4-2.8 lens and 4K UHD video and 4K photo features. Does the $700 camera deliver on its solid specs and features list? Read on to find out.

Panasonic LX10 is a sleek, compact camera
As a "premium compact," the Panasonic LX10 should have a premium feel, and it achieves this through its interesting design and fabrication process. The camera has a seamless metal profile, which means that the top panel is part of the front panel. This leads to a smooth, sleek appearance. In fact, the camera is perhaps too smooth. Whereas the Canon G7X II has a textured grip finish, the LX10 (and RX100 series) does not. The Panasonic LX10 has a very small front grip, which doesn't do much to provide security when holding the camera, so I highly recommend always using the included wrist strap.

Read our Panasonic LX10 Field Test

Panasonic LX10 Image Quality Comparison

See how the LX10's IQ has advanced since the LX7 and compares to rivals

by Zig Weidelich | 03/07/2017

Here we present crops from our laboratory Still Life target comparing the Panasonic LX10's image quality to its aging predecessor's, the LX7, as well as to a more recent sibling, the Panasonic LX100. We also compare it to a few competing compact enthusiast cameras: the Canon G7X Mark II, Canon G9X and Sony RX100 V. All cameras in this comparison use 1"-type sensors except for the Panasonic LX7 which uses a much smaller 1/1.7" sensor, and the Panasonic LX100 which has a larger Four Thirds sensor.

NOTE: These images are from best quality JPEGs straight out of the camera, at default settings including noise reduction and using the camera's actual base ISO (not extended ISO settings). Clicking any crop will take you to a carrier page where you can click once again to access the full resolution image as delivered straight from the camera. For those interested in working with the RAW files involved, click these links to visit each camera's respective sample image thumbnail page: Panasonic LX10, Panasonic LX100, Canon G7X II, Canon G9X , Sony RX100 IV and Sony RX100 V -- links to the RAW files appear beneath those for the JPEG images, wherever we have them. And remember, you can always go to our world-renowned Comparometer to compare the Panasonic LX10 to any camera we've ever tested!

See our Image Quality Comparison

Panasonic LX10 Print Quality

Find out how large you can print!

by William Brawley | 03/07/2017

Print quality and image quality are similar but not identical, because what you see on a print isn't always the same as what you see on the screen. Our print quality analysis answers the important question: "Just how big can I print my photos at higher ISOs?"

Competing against the wildly popular Sony RX100-series and Canon G7X-series, the LX10 is Panasonic's take on the premium compact camera. Also sporting a 20-megapixel 1-inch-type CMOS sensor, the Panasonic LX10 has a similar showing to the RX100 IV, for example, with comparable print sizes up to ISO 800. At extended low ISOs and through ISO 200, the LX10 offers nice, high-resolution prints up to 24 x 36 inches, which is quite impressive even though they are pushing the limits of its sensor. At ISO 800, the LX10 offers pleasing prints at up to 13 x 19 inches. However, past that ISO level, the LX10 begins to show some noticeable print quality degradation due to strong noise reduction processing, which does a good job of removing noise but at the expense of fine detail and color saturation. ISO 1600 prints top out at 8 x 10 inches, while ISO 3200 and 6400 are limited to 5 x 7 inches. At the maximum native ISO of 12,800 and extended ISO 25,600, the LX10's prints are too noisy and lacking in detail for usable prints.

Read our Panasonic LX10 Print Quality Analysis

Panasonic LX10 Conclusion

A capable, full-featured compact camera and a great value

by Jeremy Gray | 03/08/2017

The Panasonic LX10 joined a crowded premium compact camera market this past fall. Equipped with a 20.1-megapixel 1-inch-type sensor, like many premium compact cameras, the LX10 also offers a quick 24-72mm equivalent f/1.4-2.8 lens. What helps set it apart from the competition is its 4K video and 4K Photo features along with a sub-$700 price tag. How does the camera's image quality, performance and overall usability fare?

LX10's 20MP sensor impresses and so does the fast built-in lens
The LX10 is a follow-up to the LX7 and employs a larger 1-inch-type sensor this time around. The 20.1-megapixel sensor proved to be quite good and comparable to its competition, including the Sony RX100 V, Canon G7X II and Canon G9X.

When comparing the LX10 to the LX7, the LX10 represents a considerable upgrade in every way, from detail to high ISO performance. The LX10 bests its 1-inch Canon competition overall, although the LX10 does display slightly more sharpening halos at low ISOs. Compared to the Sony RX100 V, the LX10 comes up a bit short at base ISO, but the gap is small and decreases as ISO increases. Ultimately, the LX10 is a very solid competitor in its class and offers good image quality. You can make good 13 x 19 inch prints up to ISO 800, for example, which is impressive for a 1-inch-type sensor camera.

Read our Panasonic LX10 Conclusion

In the Box

The Panasonic LX10 retail package contains the following items:

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10 digital camera
DMW-BLH7 7.2V 680mAh lithium-ion battery pack
AC/USB adapter
USB cable
Hand strap
One-year limited warranty

Recommended Accessories

Large capacity SDHC/SDXC memory card. We recommend at least 32GB capacity, with a minimum UHS Speed Class 3 rating for recording 4K video.
Extra battery pack for extended outings (~US$45)
Small camera case