Best Panasonic Cameras of 2026

A school concert, a stadium show, a whale offshore — the shots you cannot walk closer to are what the 24-720mm Leica lens is for, and it does them from a body that slips into a jacket pocket. Thirty times optical zoom, 20.3MP on a 1/2.3-inch backside-illuminated sensor, and 322 grams of camera.

That is the case for taking it instead of something bigger: it is the one you actually have with you. We appreciated the small conveniences more than the headline numbers — USB-C charging from the same cable as a phone, and a Send Image button that pushes a shot to a paired phone over Bluetooth without digging through menus. The 1,840k-dot screen tilts, so an overhead shot at a concert is not guesswork.

At 720mm the optical stabilization does most of the work, and we still braced against a wall for the longest handheld frames, which is worth planning for if you shoot from the back row. In good light the files hold up fine; this is a daylight camera that happens to fit in a pocket.

The fan is the tell. Panasonic put a small internal fan and a high-efficiency heat sink in this body so recording keeps going instead of stopping when things get warm, and that single decision is what makes the S5IIX a video camera rather than a stills camera that also does video. It records 6K, holds 14+ stops in V-Log, and can bake a LUT into the file in camera.

The autofocus is what impressed us most. Phase Hybrid AF gives it 779 points, 273 of them phase-detection, and the difference shows when a subject walks toward you: the contrast-based systems elsewhere in this group hunt in that situation, and this one holds. Active I.S. keeps walking shots steadier than a handheld 6K clip has any right to be.

It is the most expensive camera in this group, and the money buys the cooling, the phase-detect autofocus, and the dual card slots. For someone shooting stills and long-form video on the same body, that is a fair trade; for travel snapshots, the S9 or a pocket model makes more sense.

At 1.3 pounds, this is the lighter of the two bridge cameras here, and it reaches twice as far as the other one — 1200mm against 600mm. Sixty times optical zoom, 16.1MP on a 1/2.3-inch sensor, a 3-inch LCD and an electronic viewfinder, and a body you can carry on a strap all day.

Using it is a lesson in long-lens discipline. At full zoom, half a step of handshake moves the frame a county over; the optical stabilization helps, and a monopod or a wall helps more. Focus is the mixed part — quick on nearby subjects, less sure when you push all the way out on something small and distant, so bursts and a second attempt are worth the habit.

What we did not expect is how little it gets in the way otherwise. The controls are shallow enough to learn in an afternoon, and 16.1MP is plenty for a print. It is the camera we point new long-lens shooters to: the reach teaches you what focal length really does, and you find out whether a superzoom suits you before spending serious money.

Full frame in something you can carry like a compact is the pitch, and the S9 delivers it with an 18-40mm kit lens that barely protrudes. The interesting part is Open Gate: it records the full sensor area in 6K, so one take crops to widescreen, square, or vertical without a second setup. For anyone shooting once and posting in three places, that is real time back.

The 18-40mm range is wider than most kit lenses, which suits arm's-length video and interior shots, and the full-frame sensor gives you more room in low light than the 1/2.3-inch cameras here can offer. We found the phone handoff genuinely quicker than pulling a card: LUMIX Lab moves files over Wi-Fi, and the whole design assumes you will edit and post from a phone rather than a desktop.

Autofocus is the compromise. This body uses Panasonic's depth-from-defocus system with 255 points rather than the phase-detection hardware in the S5IIX, which is fine for framed, deliberate shooting and less so for anything moving fast. That is less a flaw than a description: the S9 rewards a simple setup and a slower pace, and it is the full-frame camera we reach for when the bag has to stay small.

Built-in GPS and a 20x zoom in a body that weighs 6.56 ounces — for a certain kind of trip this is still the sensible camera. It is the least expensive model here, it shoots 14.1MP stills and 1080p video, and the 24-480mm range covers what most people actually photograph on a hike or a city break.

We like how little there is to think about. The touchscreen handles most navigation, the zoom lever falls under a finger, and the camera is out of a jacket pocket and ready before a scene passes. There is no Wi-Fi here, so photos come off on the card or a cable — pack a cheap card reader and it stops mattering.

The GPS is the quietly useful part. Every frame comes back tagged, so a year later you can find the cliff you photographed without guessing which overlook it was. That, and a zoom range a phone cannot match, is the case for carrying a separate camera at all.