How Does the EOS R6 Stack Up Against Its Newer Mark II Counterpart?

As the holiday season approaches, you're going to see some fire-sale prices on previous gen hardware. One of these that's probably on the mind of a lot of Canon shooters is the EOS R6, as it's going to be a lot cheaper than its newer sibling, the EOS R6 Mark II. Is it worth saving the money?

The CameraVille takes a deep, head-to-head dive of these two cameras, comparing such features as image quality, buffering speed, screen quality and low-light performance. Is it worth spending the few hundred extra to get the latest and greatest? As always, the answer is: It depends.

As an owner of the original R6, I've often thought that an additional 4 megapixels would make this camera perfect. Although this seems to be the primary upgrade in the R6 Mark II, the video notes that this extra resolution negatively impacts the camera's buffer performance, with the new model reaching its limits quicker than the older one. However, the added megapixels don’t appear to compromise image quality or low-light performance.

The Mark II notably excels in autofocus, surpassing the original R6, according to real-world tests. This is surprising, as the autofocus on my R6 has always been satisfactory, but the evidence suggests significant improvement. It appears that an already great camera has been enhanced further.

The CameraVille highlights a major difference in the construction of the hot shoe. Although I've had no issues with mine, given that I seldom attach much to it, the R6 reportedly has problems with the hot shoe detaching, a costly repair that could offset any initial savings.

The video also discusses a few other nuanced differences. For a detailed understanding of these, watching the full video is recommended.

Do you own an R6? Are you considering an upgrade to the Mark II? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Wasim Ahmad's picture

Wasim Ahmad is an assistant teaching professor teaching journalism at Quinnipiac University. He's worked at newspapers in Minnesota, Florida and upstate New York, and has previously taught multimedia journalism at Stony Brook University and Syracuse University. He's also worked as a technical specialist at Canon USA for Still/Cinema EOS cameras.

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4 Comments

I'm happy with my R6.... and I felt a little blindsided when the R6II came out right after my purchase!
I'd like to have the R6II but honestly I'll skip it for whatever replaces the R6II in a year or so.

Well, most of my lenses are MF, so the R6 is all I need. 24MP would be fine, but 20 are sufficient, and maybe, in a few years, when Canon puts out the next generation there'll be a nice R6ii second hand at a decent price.

My R62 is coming back from the shop tomorrow. For landscapes it was great but for eye focus it was a disaster. So many shots with the eyes out of focus (operating in eye tracking mode with setting set to be sticky as possible).

I got a message from them two days ago saying that they couldn't recreate the issue. I'm sure they wasn't taking portraits of themselves in the repair facility. They asked for files to show the issue and I sent them 20 images with the eyes out of focus.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they fixed it, because if not I'm selling it off. I bought that thing brand new I want the same awesome eye autofocus that everybody says it's supposed to have.

Could it be that your lens needs fine tuning in the cam? Does it happen with all lenses? I'd test that, and google fine tuning next (as I never had to do that).