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Performance
- 14fps or 30fps RAW burst mode
- 305-shot battery life
Going on appearances, the Canon EOS M6 Mark II may not immediately strike you as being suited to action, sports and wildlife photography, but for a camera so diminutive it's actually packing some impressive specs that will appeal to photographers working in those genres.
One such feature is 14fps shooting, which takes advantage of the sensor's full resolution, or if you're happy to drop down to 18-megapixel shooting, there’s a dedicated 30fps RAW burst mode. On the downside, the buffer isn’t huge – you’ll get 54 JPEGs or 23 raw files before it slows down, and a good workaround is to set it to capture smaller C-raw files, of which you’ll get 36.
The official battery rating of the EOS M6 Mark II is a fairly unremarkable 305 shots, but with careful power management you can usually eke out far more than that. Good news here is that USB-C charging is on hand, which is great for power-ups on the move, or if you don't want to pack a whole lot of chargers when you travel.
Image quality
- Highest-resolution Canon APS-C sensor
- Up to 25,600 native ISO
- Great 'Fine Detail' Picture Style
The new sensor inside the EOS M6 Mark II (and indeed, the Canon EOS 90D) comes with some pretty high expectations, thanks to its highest-ever resolution accolade – and happily, it’s capable of producing excellent-looking images.
It’s disappointing not to see inbuilt optical image stabilization here, as it means you have to be a little bit careful with how you shoot, perhaps using faster shutter speeds or higher ISOs, but on the whole we were impressed with the performance from a camera that's so small and travel-friendly.
We took lots of shots using the different Picture Style options, but our favorite is probably the Fine Detail setting, which takes advantage of that ultra-high pixel count to deliver images which almost pop from the screen, with excellent colors and bags of detail. Of course, many will also shoot in raw, and the M6 Mark II's raw files are fairly malleable, giving you good scope to adjust exposure in post-production.
Only the EF-M 15-45mm f/3.5-6.3 lens was supplied to us for testing with the camera, and while it's a decent walkabout lens for everyday use, you're likely to find that you crave better and/or more versatile optics at some point. Given the small size of the EOS M6 Mark II, a fantastic option for subjects like street and travel photography would be the EF-M 32mm f/1.4.
Having access to uncropped 4K video is excellent news, and here the EOS M6 Mark II also performs well, producing well-detailed, nicely saturated videos that any vlogger should certainly be happy with.
