Canon 1D X Mark II First Shots: We get our hands on a final production copy of the flagship EOS camera

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by William Brawley

posted Tuesday, May 3, 2016 at 2:54 PM EST

At long last, we've finally procured our final production-level Canon 1D X Mark II review sample. We therefore wasted no time sending it down to the lab for testing. Although earlier we posted pre-production real-world gallery images, we'd yet to run our standardized lab test shots in order to get a more analytical look at this flagship camera's image quality.

Sporting a brand new 20.2-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor, the 1DX II offers a slight bump up in resolution from the 18MP Canon 1D X. The Mark II is also now closely matched to its major competitor, the 20.8-megapixel Nikon D5. This new sensor and dual DIGIC 6+ image processor setup offers improved expanded ISO capabilities up to ISO 409,600. That still a bit shy of the D5's highest expanded ISO setting of 3,280,000!

Nevertheless, these two cameras are the heavy-hitters of the professional sports and wildlife world, so let's take a look at how the brand new Canon 1D X Mark II stacks up against its predecessor as well as its arch rival. As always, you can do your own side-by-side comparisons with our Comparometer, but for a quick taste-test, scroll down for some 1:1 comparisons below.

Or, if you simply want to jump over to the meat of the matter, check out the Canon 1D X Mark II Samples Page for all of our laboratory First Shots, with the full range of test images across the ISO scale, including both JPEGs and RAWs.