I’m still struggling to find a niche in my mental drawer of caregories in which to fit the Leica X1. So it’s not a p&s, as it has an APS-C CMOS sensor the size of which you’d expect to find in a DSLR. It’s not a system camera (or DSLR for that matter) either, as it has a fixed, 36mm eq. f/2.8 lens. It also isn’t a rangefinder*, obviously, as you frame your picture via the screen as with a p&s. But as I said, it isn’t a p&s … It’s a Leica for sure, as it looks like a Leica and has a Leica lens that was specifically designed for the X1 and that delivers like any Leica lens – tack sharp at any aperture setting, great colors, great contrast, smooth bokeh. BUT – here’s where I’m lost: The pictures I’ve seen so far taken with X1’s lack any of that magic I’m used to see in Leica pictures. The bokeh is smooth, but that’s it. My 20/1.7’s bokeh is smooth as well. Colors and contrast are nice – so is it with my 20/1.7. And then, the lens is not exactly fast, forcing you to start increasing the ISO pretty soon when light gets dim. The X1 surely is a great performer at high ISOs – but let’s say it has a 1-stop advantage over Micro Four Thirds, then there’s still half a stop of speed the E-P1 + 20/1.7 combo has in advantage over the X1.

So for me, personally, isn’t anything it pretends to be. It doesn’t perform any better (overall) than my Micro Four Thirds setup, but easily costs twice as much. It also has doesn’t handle any better than the E-P1 from what I gathered from the reviews. So the only thing that’s left in the X1 is that red dot. (Oh, and the flash of course …)

Seriously, I’m not that crazy. But others may be, and others seem to be happy with it, so who am I to judge?

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*I am aware of the fact that technically speaking a rangefinder is merely the coupled optical viewfinder, but I am so keen as to use the term comprising the rest of the rangefinder camera as well.