A Note on Lens Quality
Something we've noticed while testing all of the 1"-type enthusiast compacts is a large amount of variation in lens quality.
In this case, we have one G7 X II that's soft in the corners but great in the center and another that's just the opposite. The lenses on our original G7 Xs as well as a pair of G5 Xs weren't great, either. But this isn't a Canon problem alone. Of our four Sony RX100 IV cameras, three have so-so lenses and one is stellar. But then three of our four RX100 III copies have very good lenses. In other words, your mileage may vary.
Given the ambitious nature of the lenses on these cameras it's not surprising that there's a lot of variation. While you might find a copy that's sharp corner-to-corner, odds are that you won't, but that's the nature of the beast.
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The lens is a big part of image quality and, as with all enthusiast compacts, there is a lot of variation camera-to-camera. Even if your camera has one of the best lenses in the batch, its performance may not be consistent throughout the focal range. One of our G7 X's had good corner sharpness but was soft at its telephoto end, while the second one was just the opposite. We've generally found this lens design, found in both the G7 X and G5 X as well, to be weak at the wider focal lengths relative to the RX100 cameras from Sony.
