Sean
Canon quality construction. Image quality is good outdoors in daylight but looks a little muddy grainy in low light in video mode. It does have that canon warm soft reddish hue. You can change some of the settings to try and balance it out a little. Its more prominent at night indoors or under low light. Could be sharper in 4k. You can bump up the sharpness in the settings menu but 4k should be super sharp. Some of my action cameras have better 4k. This is surprisingly bad 4k. The sharpness and clarity is not there in video mode. The image stabilization is getting closer to almost gimbal like but not quite there yet. Still a ways off but its pretty good. The audio is great for an on board microphone. Most manufacturers forget about the audio. This camera has audio that is better than most. Its not hollow or tin can ish. Arms length away you dont need an external mic. Sound comes in great. They forgot to have an external mic input but the audio is so good I dont think Ill ever need one with this. I can always use a DVR. But it would be nice to have so I can use a lav. The other thing they could have done is to make it splash proof. Which all cameras should be. Auto focus works well no hunting even zoomed in. Face tracking works pretty good too. Taking photos requires a steady hand. The slightest movement like pressing the shutter button will result in a blurry picture. The UI is easy to use all the adjustment are smooth and easy. Good responsive interface. The zoom is one of its strong points. I was amazed out how far you can zoom with no focusing issues. 5 points a camera must have: 1) Image Quality .... Good but rather soft noisy and muddy indoors and in low light. 2) Audio Quality .... Great for an onboard mic. 3) Image Stabilization .... Nice getting closer and closer to a gimbal. 4 External Mic Input .... At least the onboard is good but its always nice to have. 5) Waterproof .... Not talking about scuba diving here but it would be great not to worry about rain spills wet hands etc. Update: Putting the camera on the center focusing setting instead of the face tracking drastically improves the sharpness and clarity. Turning the lighting optimizer to low or off also helps a lot. Bumping up the sharpness under the standard profile helps a little too. The image is much sharper and not as soft and muddy. It still struggles a bit in low light indoors etc but the amazing zoom the image stabilization and onboard microphone win me over every time. The zoom on this thing rivals my Canon SX60HS superzoom camera. But the 4k image quality is several steps behind. It is also cropped in quite a bit. Its becoming a pain to use. If youre not in well lit conditions like out in the sun the image suffers. Faces are to red. In face tracking mode its starting to focus hunt. The main thing that is getting to me now is the blurry soft video quality everywhere except other than being in sunlight. If I had to do it all over I probably would not buy this.