Panasonic LX100 II Performance

Generally very good performance, but sluggish power-up and buffer clearing.

Powerup to first shot was quite sluggish at about 2.8 seconds. Switching from Play to Record mode and taking a shot was faster, though, at about 1.3 seconds.

The Panasonic LX100 II offers three Shutter Type settings: Auto (which will use the mechanical shutter when it can), Mechanical and Electronic.

Using Mechanical shutter mode, the LX100 II's autofocus speeds were quite fast, and even competitive with most prosumer DSLRs in our static tests. Full AF-S shutter lag was only about 0.16 second at max wide-angle and about 0.15 second at full telephoto. Full AF shutter lag increased to about 0.55 second with the bundled flash enabled, to account for pre-flash metering.

When manually focused, the Panasonic LX100 II's shutter lag actually increased to 0.19 second, though that's still pretty quick. The LX100 Mark II's prefocused shutter lag time was only 0.037 second, which is quite fast.

When using the all-electronic shutter mode, lag times were longer as expected, though still fairly quick. Note that flash photography is not supported in e-shutter mode.

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 time was about 0.5 second for best quality JPEG or RAW+JPEG files. (Note that we no longer test single-shot mode with just RAW files, as the results are usually somewhere in between JPEG and RAW+JPEG.)

High Speed Continuous mode performance was quite fast with single-shot AFS mode (focus locked at the first frame of burst). With the mechanical shutter, we measured 11.3 frames per second for best quality JPEGs and 11.2 fps for RAW or RAW+JPEG files. And electronic shutter mode delivered very similar performance. Note that if you enable continuous autofocus, the frame rate drops to about 5.5 fps according to Panasonic, but we did not test that in the lab. There are also Middle and Low speed modes, rated at 7 and 2 fps respectively.

The LX100 II no longer offers a Super High Speed burst mode (the LX100 could capture 3-megapixel JPEGs at 40 fps for 60 frames in this mode), however there are still 4K Photo modes which can capture 8.3-megapixel stills at 30 fps for up to 15 minutes, though these are just frames extracted from a 4K MP4 movie.

Full resolution buffer depths were excellent, ranging from well over 100 frames for best quality JPEGs to a worst case of 32 or 33 frames for RAW+JPEG files.

Buffer clearing times were a bit sluggish, though, ranging from 17.5 seconds after a max-length burst of best quality JPEGs to a worst case of 33.2 seconds after a max-length burst of RAW+JPEG frames with our fast Lexar Pro 2000x SDXC card. You can however view just-shot images and change settings while the buffer is clearing.

The bundled flash took 3.8 seconds on average to recycle after full power discharge. This is on the slow side.

Bottom line, apart from sluggish power-on to first shot and slow buffer clearing, the Panasonic LX100 II's performance is very good for its class with fast autofocus, low shutter lag, very good burst mode speed and generous buffer depths.

Decent battery life for its class.

The Panasonic LX100 II uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with a single battery and an AC/USB adapter for in-camera charging. (A dedicated battery charger can be purchased separately.) The battery is CIPA-rated for 300 shots per charge when using the LCD monitor with bundled flash active (50% flash shot) or 340 shots without flash. When using the electronic viewfinder, battery life drops to 240 with 50% flash shots or 270 shots without flash. There's an ECO30fps mode which lowers the displays' refresh rate from 60 to 30 fps which in turn improves battery life with the EVF to 280 and 320 shots respectively.

Battery life is not bad for a compact camera with a relatively large sensor, but we still recommend getting a second battery for your LX100 II if you plan any extended outings or shoot a lot of video.

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))