I think the biggest thing for me is how intuitive it is to use and/or how much I can customize to make it intuitive. I think the problem I had with the RX100, beyond my obsession with being able to set any camera up to zone focus (an admittedly personal issue but a big one), was how much they squeezed into such a small camera. It seemed like most things I'd need to do required some sort of button push and then scrolling through a list of options (or turning the lens ring to sort through them) and then making your specific choices. Which beat having to go directly into the menus, but really not all that different. I never had that problem with the Nex 5, where I could customize the interface so that the controls I had to access a lot were only a single button push away and stuff I had to access occasionally was within two pushes. And the RX1 is just fine between the custom memory settings on the mode dial and the five programmable buttons. So it's highly customizable and easy to set up exactly how I want it. Two of my favorite interfaces are Ricoh and Olympus, which have somewhat complex menus but those menus allow for an amazing amount of customizability. Panasonic doesn't tend to allow for as much customizing, but their external controls are well enough laid out that I never felt the need to customize much. Fuji is similar and even more to my liking, at least once they got past the first few firmware updates on the X100, which was pretty out there initially.
Yeah, I saw that. And I saw Steve Huff's AF video with the X100s too and both of those guys are pretty positive about it. But most of the folks who have them already on DPR and elsewhere seem to be forming a consensus that its waaaaay better than any previous Fujis (and, thus clearly the RX1) in good light - the PDAF really kicks it into another gear. But that in low light, the PDAF doesn't do much and it still hunts as much as the other Fuji models. So maybe it'll take a bit longer to know for sure. But based on my experience - I did quite a bit more testing of this last night - the RX1 is almost as fast as the 18mm lens on the X-Pro but is a LOT more sure and actually very difficult to make it hunt. Whereas the Fuji will hunt a LOT unless there's some pretty clearly contrasty item to grab focus on. The caveat is that the RX1 doesn't automatically focus wide open and then stop down to take the shot. from f2 to f8, it focuses at the aperture you've selected and at smaller than f8, it focusses at f8. So if you don't make sure the lens is pretty wide open in low light, then it will hunt quite a lot. But open it up to f2 or f2.8 and its amazing how sure the AF is. Not a speed demon, but it locks on first time every time. I was getting this result in light so low that it had to go to iso 12800 to get an exposure at f2 and 1/40 of a second, so low I'd probably never actually try to shoot in it - just a distant indirect hall light illuminating a basically dark bedroom. But it kept nailing focus on pretty low-contrast scenes over and over. The Fuji can't do that - if the X100s can, I'll tip my hat to it big time.
You won't find a bigger proponent of zone focussing (which Ricoh's "snap focus" is a pretty good shortcut for) than me and I use the 28mm module in snap focus the vast majority of the time. Hell, I was the guy who wouldn't even TRY the RX1 until I worked out that there actually was a reasonably convenient way to use IT for zone focus! But while today's awesome sensors allow a lot more opportunity to zone focus in low-ish light, there are plenty of situations where you're simply not going to be able to get (or may not want) enough depth of field to use that approach. To me having an AF system that works well in low light is almost more important than one that works in good light.
So ... buying or not?
And zone focus or manual focusing techniques can't always substitute, as Ray suggested in an earlier post. Personally, I'd be reasonably happy with focus peaking that doesn't also force magnification assist as an alternative to the AF for some scenarios... fingers crossed they decouple those two in a firmware update.
Yeah, the comment about a mechanical shutter dial was me being super nit-picky, if I could dream up some hypothetical camera design. With the rest of the camera being clicky positive metal switches it just seems incongruous to have shutter speed be a soft plastic wheel. In actual practice as Ray said shutter speed gets changed less than aperture and exposure comp in most cases anyway, and it's perfectly fine as is.
Hikari, good tip on the AEL button to change shutter/aperture with same exposure. Between that and the ability to use auto-ISO with exposure comp, I may never take this camera out of M mode again
