The best mirrorless cameras are an essential for photographers wanting to hone their craft. Mirrorless cameras have mostly replaced DSLR models, as they offer several advantages over their predecessors. As their name suggests, mirrorless cameras do not use a mirror to capture images, which makes them smaller, more lightweight and faster than their DSLR counterparts.
There are three main sensor types available on mirrorless cameras. Professional photographers are likely to favor full-frame sensors as they provide the highest image quality, but these models can be very expensive. Hobbyists, on the other hand, may get on just fine with a crop-sensor APS-C or Micro Four Thirds camera, as they tend to be considerably cheaper.
With so many options to choose from, how do you decide which camera is best for your needs? Our expert reviewers have scoured the market and tested out a large range of mirrorless cameras, rounding up all the best options for different purposes and price points below. They include their expert opinion on each camera, as well as their main specs and features.
If you're not necessarily set on a mirrorless camera, check out our guide to the best cameras for photos and videos. Those just starting out on their photography journey may want to consult our best beginner cameras guide. Anyone who's mainly interested in shooting the night sky should also check out our guides to the best cameras for astrophotography and the best lenses for astrophotography.
The quick list
Below we've summarized our top picks of the best mirrorless cameras, including their main specs, features and whom they might be best suited for. If you need more in-depth information, click on the 'read more below' buttons to read full reviews of each product.
Best overall
The Z8 feels like a true hybrid between Nikon's DSLR technology and more modern mirrorless capabilities. The result is something very special, and we think this is the best mirrorless camera you can buy right now.
Best Sony
The successor of the popular A7R IV, this camera does everything the previous model did and more. It has industry-leading AI-based autofocus and produces hugely detailed images.
Best hybrid
We'd go as far to call the EOS R5 one of Canon's best technical achievements so far. If you're a professional photographer, you can't get much better than this.
Best value
Whether you're shooting landscapes, portraits or weddings, the Sony A7R IV does a stellar job. Since there's a newer version of it, you can grab this model at a bargain.
Best for pros
The Z9 is an absolute powerhouse, but its price takes it out of many photographers' league. Whether you're shooting landscapes, portraits or astrophotography, you'll get outstanding results.
Best all-rounder
The Nikon Z7 II is a true jack-of-all-trades, combining power, speed and precision with a simple interface.
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Best for detail
With its 8K/30P video and 50.1MP stills, the Sony A1 is all about the details. It's a serious powerhouse of a camera that you'll absolutely love shooting with.
Best for intermediates
The Canon EOS R6 boasts great noise handling even at high ISOs and produces great stills and videos.
Great generalist
We love the compact body of the Fujifilm X-T5, but its size doesn't take away from its power: It has a whopping 40MP sensor and a speedy processor.
Best APS-C model
It might be a crop sensor, but the EOS R7 does a valiant job with just about anything you can throw at it.
Best for beginners
Seriously stylish, practical and affordable, the X-T30 II is a great place to start your photography journey, whether you're taking travel snaps or capturing friends and family.
Best Micro Four Thirds
This is a small, lightweight camera that offers a great balance between usability, quality and a simple interface.
Best value for astro
The Nikon Z6 II is a good all-rounder, with small but welcome improvements on the Nikon Z6.
Kimberley Lane is a landscape & seascape photographer living in South Wales. Originally using photography as a way to cope with health issues, she aims to portray a feeling of calm and peace through her images. Her work has been featured in a number of national photography magazines.
The best mirrorless cameras we recommend in 2024
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Best overall
✅ You can afford it: This is a big investment but it's worth it if your budget stretches that far.
✅ You shoot stills and video: This camera performs extremely well in both.
❌ You don't see yourself in the photography game long term: This is a very expensive camera, and it'll be overkill for most casual shooters.
❌ You're looking or something lightweight and portable: This model is significantly heavier and bigger than its predecessor. It looks and feels like a professional camera.
🔎 Nikon Z8: Professionals need look no further — if you combined all the best parts of the flagship Nikon Z9 and the best DSLR in the world, the Nikon D850, you'd be left with this heavy-hitter. ★★★★★
If you're an amateur on a budget, look away now: the Nikon Z8 isn't for you. But if you're a professional who earns their living from photography, or have plenty of money to spend on your hobbies, mirrorless cameras don't really come better than this.
If we had to sum up the Nikon Z8, we'd say it takes all the best bits of the fantastic Nikon D850 DSLR and Nikon's flagship Nikon Z9 and mixes them together to yield fantastic results.
Design: This camera looks and feels seriously great, managing to be sturdy and strong at the same time. It feels comfortable in your hands, with enough grip to suit even the largest palms. We love the controls and found their placement natural and well thought-out. It's on the large side for a mirrorless camera, but the Nikon Z8 still manages to be smaller than some of its competitors, and it's light enough to hold for long periods of time.
One of the bugbears of many professional cameras in the past was their tilting-only rear screens. Thankfully, it seems Nikon has listened to feedback, and the Z8 has a four-axis screen which tilts left-to-right and top-to-bottom, making recomposing scenes much easier.
Performance: Even after extensive testing, we weren't able to find anything that the Nikon Z8 couldn't handle. In our Nikon Z8 review, we found it delivered excellent results, both for stills and video. This beast of a camera is an excellent companion for anything from wedding shoots to landscapes, portraits and sporting events.
Astrophotographers in particular may be impressed with the night vision mode, which displays red pixels so you can see the controls in low light without causing light pollution. This camera's ability to handle noise is also a great advantage when shooting in low-light conditions. Videographers will greatly appreciate that the camera can shoot in N-Log, ProRes and Raw HQ formats.
Functionality: There isn't much we can criticize with the Nikon Z8. It's a fantastic camera that most professional and accomplished photographers would be delighted to have in their photography kit. But if we had to pick a fault, it would be that its screen doesn't fully articulate.
It's not the biggest problem, and most photographers will be able to work just as well without it, but it does make it slightly more awkward when you're trying to shoot at certain angles. That said, this really is a small complaint, and all we can say is the Nikon Z8 in a league of its own.
- Read our full Nikon Z8 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Design | Outstanding build quality, but it's big and heavy. |
| Performance | Starlight mode enables autofocus detection down to an unheard of -9EV. |
| Functionality | Night vision mode for astrophotographers. |
Best Sony
✅ You shoot multiple styles: This camera excels at most photographic styles and video, so if you like to shoot many different subjects, this could be the camera for you.
✅ You shoot portraits or weddings: The new AI-based autofocus system is on another level and makes shooting people easier than ever.
❌ You mainly shoot astro: Due to so many megapixels, the images are very noisy. It's fine for occasional astro shots with AI denoise in post-processing, but there are better options if that's your focus.
🔎 Sony A7R V: The Sony A7R V builds on the power of its predecessor with its higher resolution EVF and LCD screen, more stops of image stabilization and a new AI autofocus unit, but the massive 61MP sensor provides too much noise for astrophotography. ★★★★½
Design: Before the A7R V came along, its predecessor, the Sony A7R IV, was one of the best mirrorless cameras you could buy. In fact, it's still good enough to have a place on this list, but the A7R V is a great second iteration, making it a very worthy upgrade.
In fact, this camera is nothing short of fantastic. The improvements it makes on its predecessor are numerous, but most notable is its 4-axis multi-angle LCD screen. This makes shooting from any angle a cinch, and it displays incredible, colorful detail thanks to its 2,095M dot screen.
We think the articulated screen will be much appreciated by astrophotographers in particular, as it makes shooting up towards the sky much easier. If we're being picky, it'd be great if the screen fit flush against the rest of the back of the camera body. That said, it does flip around so the actual screen isn't on show when it's sitting in your camera bag, making it less likely to get damaged.
Performance: In our Sony A7R V review, we noted how impressed we were with the autofocus on this camera. It's a huge improvement on the A7R IV, which already had very good autofocus. In this iteration, though, it's incredible. It uses an AI system to recognize human movements, poses and body parts and its internal technology can predict how the subject might move. It's also excellent at tracking subjects like animals, insects and vehicles.
Functionality: There are eight stops of image stabilization built into the Sony A7R V, which is seriously impressive. During our testing, we found we could shoot handheld at ISO 100 at 1/3 seconds, with our image coming out nice and sharp.
However, we had mixed results when it comes to astrophotography. We had to bump the ISO up in order to shoot at the stars, which resulted in a fair bit of noise — not altogether unexpected with a 61MP sensor. It's not unusable as an astro camera, as you can clean images up nicely if you've got image editing software. But it's something to bear in mind, as post-processing could take you a lot longer than you're used to.
The Sony A7R V is certainly an investment, but for the amount of tech you get, we think it's worth every cent and will last for years. If you shoot multiple disciplines, we think you'll love this camera.
- Read our full Sony A7R V review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Design | Most versatile LCD screen yet. |
| Performance | Sony's autofocus just keeps getting better thanks to the new AI system. |
| Functionality | Eight stops image stabilization proves great for low light. |
Best hybrid
✅ You want good autofocus: This camera has excellent AF even in low light.
✅ You want great image stabilization: The R5 has eight stops of it.
❌ You're on a budget: this camera is on the expensive side and is mostly a camera reserved for pros, so if you're on a budget you might want to consider other options.
❌ You shoot video a lot: there are reported overheating problems when shooting 8K video.
🔎 The Canon EOS R5 is a great choice for semi-pro photographers looking to upgrade to a camera for life. ★★★★½
Design: The Canon EOS R5 is a modern mirrorless camera that takes some of its design inspiration from Canon's earlier DSLR models. It's heavier and sturdier than your typical mirrorless camera, and it includes a right thumbstick and rotating dial on the back for adjusting the autofocus — something that will please longstanding Canon enthusiasts.
Although it feels pleasingly weighty and secure in the hand, it's notably lighter than DSLR cameras. It has an ergonomic shape and comes with a screen on the top alongside a fully-tilting touchscreen display at the back.
Performance: This camera delivers some seriously impressive image quality thanks to its 45MP full-frame sensor. You can shoot uncropped video of up to 8K in RAW image format, and it comes with an incredibly fast processor and 5-axis inbuilt body stabilization.
In our Canon EOS R5 review, we found it has one of the best autofocus systems we've ever tested. The autofocus is extremely fast and accurate, tracking faces, eyes and heads with ease and offering a continuous focus mode that is excellent for capturing sport or action shots.
It would also make a good choice for astrophotographers since it offers great performance in low-light conditions and is able to autofocus down to –6EV with very little visible noise.
Canon has managed to pack 2,130mAh into the new battery, and we gladly welcomed the fact it is also backward-compatible with any camera that accepts LP-E6.
Functionality: Whilst the specs are incredible on this camera, they're probably overkill for the average enthusiast and sometimes proved to be overkill for the battery life, too. But professionals (or those with an ample budget) will enjoy the built-in technology that enhances dynamic range in all of your shots and the Auto Lighting Optimizer and Highlight Tone Priority that mean you get bright and well-contrasted images straight out of the camera.
- Read our full Canon EOS R5 review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Design | A heavy, sturdier design than some other mirrorless cameras. |
| Performance | Exceptional low light performance. |
| Functionality | Battery life is slightly compromised. |
Best value
✅ You want to shoot the sharpest images: The stills resolution is incredible.
✅ You want great features: It has incredible functionality, typical of what you'd expect from Sony.
✅ You're a pro: As this camera is so expensive, it's really only reserved for pros who make money from photography.
❌ You want to shoot video: There is no 8K video recording, which is disappointing for a camera this expensive.
❌ You want the biggest ISO range: For the price, 100-32,000 is limited.
❌ You want the best autofocus: While we thought the autofocus was good, those who want the best should opt for the newer model, the Sony A7R V.
🔎 The Sony A7R IV is one of the highest resolution full-frame cameras on the market, and has an incredibly impressive autofocus system. ★★★★½
Design: It may be a full-frame camera, but the Sony A7R IV is more compact and lightweight than most. It's substantial enough that it's comfortable to hold, though, and its well-designed grip fits ergonomically in the hands. More importantly, it's a pleasure to use thanks to its well-placed, large buttons which and the fact it's easy to know when one of them has been pressed. We particularly like the AF joystick, which is pleasantly large and tactile.
All those carefully-considered design choices mean the Sony A7R IV is a great camera to shoot with, and it's easy and fast to get to grips with. This camera is also great to control while wearing gloves, which is ideal if you're shooting astrophotography on a chilly night.
Performance: This camera's monster 61MP sensor is still one of the highest resolutions available on the market. It produces incredible image quality alongside 4K video. In theory, it can shoot up to 10 continuous frames per second, but you can run into buffer problems when using burst shooting with such large image files, so it might not be the best choice for sports photographers. However, you do have the option of transforming the A7R IV into a 26MP APS-C camera with a 1.5x crop factor, which allows you to shoot bursts for much longer and makes it compatible with APS-C lenses.
Where this camera comes into its own, though, is the incredible Sony autofocus system. Sony has introduced what it calls 'real-time tracking', which means the camera has been trained to recognize eyes and faces. In action, the autofocus on this camera was near faultless and perfectly followed the subject, keeping their eyes constantly in focus.
Functionality: Perhaps the standout feature of the Sony A7R IV is its world-class autofocus system. Sony has introduced what it calls 'real-time tracking', which means the camera has been trained to recognize eyes and faces. This great functionality extends even to animals, so it's a great choice for pet and wildlife photographers.
During our review of the Sony A7R IV review, we were impressed by the fact the autofocus was able to tell when someone was wearing sunglasses and switched from eye to face tracking to get the best shot. In action, the autofocus on this camera was near faultless and perfectly followed the subject, keeping their eyes constantly in focus.
Astrophotographers will also be pleased to know the camera performs brilliantly in low light, reaching speeds of up to ISO 6400.
- Read our full Sony A7R IV review
| Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|
| Design | Superb build quality. |
| Performance | Bright, sharp and colorful images. |
| Functionality | High megapixel sensor means more image noise. |