I tested Lumix's latest beginner camera — and the photos blew me away

The Panasonic Lumix G97 is the successor to the Panasonic G95, and is a lower-mid-range mirrorless camera aimed at beginners or intermediate hybrid shooters (who use a camera for both stills and video).

Nestled within the G97’s bulbous, DSLR-like body is a 20.3MP micro four thirds (MFT/M43) sensor, a format which is much smaller than ASP-C or full frame sensors found in many of the best mirrorless cameras.

The G97 is a modest upgrade over its predecessor, but is nevertheless a competitive camera in the mid-range market thanks to an attractive roster of features — especially compared to rivals like the Canon EOS R50 and Fujifilm X-M5.

It produces lovely stills, will shoot 4K/30p video and packs in-body image stabilization (kind of), which isn’t easy to find at this price point. All this makes it a solid package for beginner photographers or aspiring vloggers needing an affordable hybrid mirrorless.

However, the G97 isn’t perfect. Its autofocus lags way behind its competition, its IBIS only works properly with an OIS lens, and it’s pretty chunky for such a small-sensored camera. If you can look past these flaws, though, and the natural limitations of its M43 sensor, the G97 is quite a punchy camera.

But is it one of the best mirrorless cameras in the sub-$1,000 category? Find out in my full Panasonic Lumix G97 review.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Specs

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Price & availability

The Panasonic Lumix G97 launched in February 2025 and at the time of writing is only available as an $849 kit at Amazon, which includes a 12-60mm lens. It isn’t yet available for order on the Panasonic web store.

Lumix hasn’t provided me with body-only pricing in the U.S., although in the U.K. the camera will be available for £699 body-only or £799 with the 12-60mm lens. I’d expect the body-only version to cost between $749-$799 in the U.S., based on this U.K. pricing. I’ll update this review when we know more.

A big factor to consider with any camera purchase is the availability and cost of lenses. The G97 uses MFT lenses, which are small and relatively affordable compared to, say, full frame lenses. That said, APS-C systems from Fujifilm and Sony also offer a plentiful selection of small, affordable lenses.

Panasonic offers many affordable MFT lenses with optical image stabilization (OIS), which will be very important when we get to the stabilization section below.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Design & controls

The Panasonic Lumix G97 is a bulky camera as M43 cameras go, although that’s nothing new from Lumix. OM-System, the other main proponent of M43 sensor cameras, uses the small sensor format to shrink down the sizes of their camera bodies, as with the OM-System OM-3 and Pen E-P7.

The G87, however, looks and feels like, well, a bulbous DSLR. It’s thicc. Although I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a bad thing. The deep groove of the front grip and tall profile of the camera result in reassuring and comfortable ergos.

At 1.17lbs, it isn’t a heavy camera either, and I had no problem wearing the camera around my neck all morning, despite the thoroughly uncomfortable faux-leather neck strap supplied (no camera manufacturer seems able to supply a decent neck strap anymore!)

As a Lumix, the G97 is naturally built exquisitely, and feels like a premium camera.

Displays

The Lumix G97 employs a 2.36M-dot OLED EVF, which is plenty sharp enough to match its 20.3MP sensor resolution, so I had no issues checking focus when shooting or during playback. I also found the EVF fast and responsive, with no lag during shooting.

The rear display is a 1.84M-dot 3.0-inch TFT — par for the course in this segment. It’s responsive to the touch, colorful and bright — I tested the camera across several very sunny days in Bath, U.K., and never had a problem viewing the screen.

The rear display is vari-angle, too, which is extremely useful when shooting at odd angles, shooting at the hip or shooting video.

Controls & handling

The G97’s control layout was where I started to get a little frustrated during testing. Namely, the lack of a focusing joystick. This results in you having to tap the screen to change focus points, which is cumbersome at the best of times. And just how, pray tell me, is one supposed to do that when shooting through the EVF?

No joystick also means no way to quickly reset the focus point to center, which resulted in me missing shots when I needed to quickly switch where my focus was set while shooting through the viewfinder.

Aside from that, the G97’s controls are fairly easy to use, although I wouldn’t call this a particularly fast or intuitive camera to use — disappointing given how epic the Lumix S5IIX and Lumix G9II proved in the handling department.

The G97 has two command dials for shutter and aperture, plus a dedicated top-plate button for ISO, which can then be scrolled through using the rear wheel or a command dial. I’d have preferred a third dial on the front of the grip for ISO, which would remove an unwieldy button push and speed things up a little. I use Lumix cameras a lot, so I’m used to the ISO button setup, but it always feels a little clunky, especially when using the EVF.

Menu

The G97’s menu system is decent. It’s colorful and fairly sensibly laid out, with self-explanatory labels so you know where you are. It’s an extensive menu, though, with lots of settings buried in sub-menus, which takes some getting used to. Once you know where your most-used functions are, though, you’ll have few complaints.

Connectivity

The Lumix G97 has only one UHS-II SD/SDHC/SDXC slot, although that’s standard at this price point. There are ports for headphones, mic, remote, micro-HDMI and USC-C, plus a hot shoe on top: everything a burgeoning content creator could need.

The G97 can also hook up wirelessly via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth 5.0 for data transfer or streaming, and likewise has modes for USB-C streaming/tethered shooting and data transfer.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Autofocus

Its AF system is what really holds the G97 back versus the Canon EOS R50 and Fujifilm X-M5. It’s literally stepping back a few years, as Lumix hasn’t updated the AF meaningfully from the previous model.

The G97 only features contrast detection AF, versus the hybrid contrast/phase detection increasingly standard in rivals. In scenes with low contrast, especially in low light, the camera really struggles.

There are only 49 AF zones, versus the several hundred zones on rival Canon, Sony and Fujifilm systems, and even Panasonic systems. This results in large and fairly inaccurate focus boxes when using zone AF and in continuous AF mode.

In real terms, if you’re trying to focus on something smaller than a box the camera often ends up focusing in the wrong place. In the swan image above, the swan’s head did not fill a focus box and is therefore not in as sharp focus as I’d have liked. I tended to leave the AF in small-point mode, so I could tell it where to focus, and move the focal point with a tap on the display (again, I would’ve loved a focus joystick).

There are also very limited subject detection modes. There’s human face/eye detection, and that’s it. Compare that to the EOS R50 which can track humans (eyes/faces), animals (eyes/faces) and even vehicles.

All that said, eye detection works well, as you can see from the portrait above. The camera managed to detect and hold onto the subject’s eye.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Stabilization

The Lumix G97 features 5.0-stops of stabilization, although it doesn’t feature a traditional in-body image stabilization (IBIS) system. Instead, it uses what Panasonic calls “Dual I.S.”, which is essentially just combined IBIS and optical image stabilization (OIS).

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The thing is, it only works well as a dual system. If you have a lens without OIS or you have OIS disabled, the IBIS doesn’t provide any noticeable benefit.

With OIS in tandem, as in the shots of a banjo above, I was able to shoot at around 1/15 sec handheld and come away with acceptably sharp shots, with the text visible on the banjo head. At 1/5 though, the text became illegible.

This is not as effective as a camera with a full IBIS system, like the Fujifilm X-S20, which could shoot at 1/2 sec without any optical stabilization to help.

LUMIX G97 — Dual I.S. Off (Panning) - YouTube

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With an OIS lens equipped and Dual I.S. enabled, however, stabilization is very good. You can see the difference between Dual I.S. on/off in the two panning videos above and below.

LUMIX G97 — Dual I.S. On (Panning) - YouTube

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Although it needs a lens to work properly, it’s important to note that the Canon EOS R50, Canon EOS R10 and Fujifilm X-M5 all feature no IBIS either, likewise relying on OIS lenses for stabilization. For IBIS, you'll need to step up to the $1,399 Fujifilm X-T50. And besides, affordable OIS-equipped MFT lenses are not hard to come by.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Image performance

The Lumix G97 features a 20.3MP M43 sensor — a sensor format smaller than APS-C cameras like the Fujifilm X-T5 and Sony A6700. It doesn’t produce the highest resolution files around, but this isn’t a professional high-res camera.

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The images the G97 produces look great. There’s obviously not enough resolution for serious cropping or large-format printing, but for casual users, screen viewing and smaller-format printing, 20.3MP is plenty.

Heck, I even used the G97 to shoot product photos for our Edifier WH950NB headphones review, as you can in the images below, and it did an excellent job — the fine detail on the ear cup’s faux leather are easy to make out and the images are easily sharp enough for web publication.

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The product shots above also demonstrate the G97’s standard color profile, which relays colors accurately and naturally, while precisely relaying the vivid blue background.

As a huge fan of black and white photography, I absolutely love the Leica monochrome profiles of the G97. In my opinion, they’re the only in-camera BW profile that comes anywhere near Fujifilm’s Acros profiles at the moment. I took the photo above in Leica Monochrome D, and I love the high-contrast, darkened sky and rich shadows. Gorgeous.

High speed performance

The G97 shoots at up to 9fps burst in high-speed burst drive mode, although that drops to 6fps in continuous AF.

I tested out the high speed drive to get the images of swans seen above using continuous AF. I used a relatively quick Lexar Professional UHS-II 250MB/s card, saving RAW + JPEGs, and was able to pop off several seconds of burst fire before the buffers filled.

You can often expect supreme drive speeds from M43 cameras, like the Lumix G9II, which shoots at 75fps. With the G97’s single card slot, though, this isn’t possible. Still, it’s plenty fast enough for beginners and enthusiasts to dabble in some high speed casual photography.

Dynamic range

Again, thanks to the small M43 sensor, I was expecting the G97 to display relatively poor dynamic range performance. Consider those expectations defied. In general usage, as in the street image below, the G97 captures a fairly wide dynamic range, with plenty of details in the shadows at the bottom of the image, visible when the shadows are boosted in Adobe Photoshop Camera RAW.

To put the camera through a full test, I took a backlit photo of one of our studio Nikon Z7 II rigs, as you can see below. This was taken at the camera’s lowest native sensitivity, ISO200.

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I put the RAW file through Camera RAW and boosted the dark shadows, which revealed a significant amount of detail, although some noticeable noise in the shadows even at the lowest ISO200.

The highlights from the studio lamp in the background were obviously blown out, but this is a pretty harsh test, especially for such a small sensor, and the shadow performance is still very impressive.

High ISO

Images shot at high sensitivity on MFT sensors are usually pretty grim. Boost above ISO6400 and you’re usually in a world of trouble, with RAW files destroyed by noise and JPEGs likewise mutilated by the smoothing effect of intense grain suppression.

The 20.3MP sensor in the G97 performed better than I expected, however. You can flick through the gallery below to see the straight out of camera (SOOC) JPEGs from an ISO test shoot. Obviously at low ISO values, noise is minimal, the background is well defined and the measurements on the red scale are easy to read.

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By ISO25600, I was expecting utterly unusable images, akin to those at ISO12800 on the Lumix G9II. While obviously the ISO25600 image would only be usable in an emergency, it isn’t ruined. The background has lost a lot of definition, and there’s a fair amount of distracting noise in the foreground, but the measurements on the scale are still legible.

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The RAW files (loaded into Camera RAW, cropped to 16:9 and exported as JPEG with no further adjustments) in the second gallery were a similar story. I wouldn't want to use ISO12800 for any photos that matter, but ISO6400 RAW files would be easily rectifiable and usable with some noise reduction in post. ISO12800 and ISO25600 were in much better shape than I had anticipated.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Video performance

The Lumix G97 is listed by Panasonic as a hybrid camera, although its video specs are nothing to write home about. The camera is certainly more stills-focused than Lumix’s marketing would like you to believe.

4K tops out at 30p, there are no other recording formats except H.264 MP4, no adjustable bit-depths or bit-rates for tailoring color and data capture to post production requirements, no custom LUT bank, etc. Although there is VLog for 12-stop dynamic range capture and the preset color profiles/LUTs for in-camera color grading.

LUMIX G97 — 4K:30p video - YouTube

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For slow motion, there’s an S&Q (slow & quick) mode for in-camera slow motion without the need for post production. This tops out at 1080p.

In short, the G97 is fine for clips, vlogging and streaming — especially the latter two thanks to the flip out screen and tethered streaming mode. The Dual I.S. stabilization system is also ideal for video, as you can see in the stabilized video clips throughout this review.

For any serious video work, though, you’ll want to step up to the Lumix GH7, Lumix S5IIX or Lumix S9. But hey, the G97 isn’t priced anywhere near those cameras, so its video specs all feel fair.

Alternatively, if you can live without a viewfinder, the Fujifilm X-M5 offers much more in the way of video, including 6.2K/30P, 4K/60p, 4:2:2 10-bit color and much better AF.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Battery life

Panasonic specifies a CIPA rating of 280-300 shots from a single charge, which is relatively accurate. I shot around 250 RAW + JPEG frames and several 4K video clips, using both the monitor and EVF, before hitting the red battery warning lamp. So Lumix’s CIPA rating seems about right.

This is about average at this end of the market, albeit slightly lower than rivals. The Canon EOS R50 manages 440 shots, while the Fujifilm X-M5 should net you 330 (we achieved 350 in testing). In real terms, it was enough for a day of shooting, but you’ll want a spare battery or two.

Panasonic Lumix G97 review: Verdict

The $800-ish camera market almost always comes with compromise, and the Panasonic Lumix G97 is no exception. Its rudimentary AF system is disappointing to see in 2025, especially given Lumix has introduced hybrid-AF in other MFT cameras now. Video performance, meanwhile, pales in comparison to the similarly-priced Fujifilm X-M5.

The thing is, while Lumix markets it as a hybrid, the G97 is definitely a stills-focused camera, and has genuinely impressed me with its images. A 20.3MP MFT sensor isn’t much on paper, but I’ve been thoroughly satisfied by its sharp stills, excellent color rendition, awesome black and white color profiles, surprisingly good dynamic range performance, and handy dual I.S.

If you’re an enthusiast photographer looking for an affordable camera to take some excellent photos, this could be a great option — as long as you won’t be doing any fast-paced photography, like wildlife.

Got $800 in the budget and after a new mid-range stills camera? You could do a hell of a lot worse than the Lumix G97.