Ricoh GR IVvsSony a6700: Compact or All-Rounder?

The Ricoh GR IV is the one you actually have with you. At 262 g and 32.7 mm deep it slides into a jacket pocket, and because the lens is fixed there is no mount, no lens choice and nothing to decide before you leave. That single 23.3 x 15.5 mm sensor sits behind one prime, tuned for that pairing.

The Sony a6700 asks you to commit to a bag. It measures 122 mm wide and 75.1 mm deep before a lens goes on, and at 493 g the body alone weighs nearly twice the Ricoh. In return you get the Sony E mount, which is the whole point: one body, any focal length. Pick the Ricoh if the camera would otherwise stay home; pick the Sony if you need reach or a fast portrait lens.

The Ricoh's native ISO ceiling reaches 204,800, far above the Sony's 32,000. On a small-sensor camera that headroom mostly buys you a usable handheld shot at dusk rather than clean detail, but it means the GR IV can keep shooting when the Sony owner is reaching for a tripod.

Stabilization is close, and the fine print matters. Ricoh rates the GR IV at 6 stops at frame centre but only 4 stops at the periphery, so the corners of a handheld night frame benefit less than the middle. The Sony's 5-stop rating is spread across the frame. In practice the Ricoh is still the better handheld low-light camera because it is the one you can brace against anything.

The a6700 is the action camera here by a wide margin. It shoots 11 fps and recognizes people, animals, birds, insects, cars, trains and planes, so a moving subject tends to stay locked even when it leaves the centre of the frame. The GR IV manages 4 fps and only detects human faces and eyes, with nothing for wildlife or motorsport.

That gap decides a lot of genres. If you photograph kids, dogs, birds or anything on a track, the Sony's subject recognition is the difference between a keeper and a blur. The Ricoh is fine for street scenes and slow portraits where you place the focus point yourself.

This is not close. The Ricoh GR IV tops out at 1080p in H.264 with no log profile and no dedicated headphone or HDMI port, so audio monitoring and external recording are off the table. It is a stills camera that happens to record clips.

The Sony a6700 records 4K up to 120 fps, with full-width 4K reaching 60p before the 120p mode drops to a crop. It adds HEVC, 10-bit depth and a log profile rated at 14 stops of dynamic range, plus a micro HDMI port and a headphone jack. If video is more than an afterthought, the Sony is the only real answer of the two.

Sony rates the a6700 at 570 shots per charge against 250 for the Ricoh GR IV, so the Sony covers more than twice the shooting day on one battery. Both charge over USB-C, though the Ricoh wants a USB-PD adapter for fast charging. The Ricoh carries a single microSD slot plus 53 GB of internal memory, but cannot write to both at once, so plan on one card.

Framing differs too. The Ricoh has no viewfinder at all and a fixed 3-inch screen; the Sony gives you a 2.36 M-dot finder and a fully articulated screen that flips for self-recording or low angles. The Sony's finder is steadier for long lenses; the Ricoh's fixed screen keeps the body thin enough to pocket.