Which Fuji?

Fujifilm X-M5 as Ricoh GR alternative

The Ricoh GR III, GR IIIx and GR IV against the Fujifilm X-M5, and the four small lenses that get a Fuji closest to a GR. With prices and owner reports.

By Abu Ashraf Masnun ·

I keep seeing Ricoh GRs on my feed. A GR III held up against a Tokyo alley at night, a GR IIIx in a flat-lay next to a coffee and a roll of film, somebody's Japan trip cut to a song. The algorithm worked out a long time ago that I like small cameras and it has not let go since.

Under every one of those posts, the same question in the comments. It costs about as much as a decent Fuji body, so is it worth it, or should I just buy the Fuji? I have been typing some version of the same reply for two years now, so here it is written down properly.

The short version is that the Ricoh GR does one thing better than anything else on the market, that thing is genuinely worth paying for, and it is probably not the thing you think it is. And if it turns out you do not need that one thing, the Fujifilm X-M5 plus one small lens gets you most of the way there for similar money with a lot fewer sharp edges.

What a Ricoh GR really is

There are three current GR bodies and people mix them up constantly. All three are the same idea: an APS-C sensor and a fixed prime lens crammed into a magnesium shell that weighs about as much as a phone and a half, with a lens that retracts flush when you switch the camera off. No viewfinder. No mount. One focal length, forever.

  • GR III — 24.2 MP, an 18.3 mm f/2.8 lens giving a 28 mm-equivalent view, 3-axis stabilisation good for about four stops, 257g, 33.2 mm deep, 1,049.95 USD on Ricoh US.
  • GR IIIx — the same body with a 26.1 mm lens instead, so a 40 mm-equivalent view, 262g, 35.2 mm deep, 1,249.95 USD.
  • GR IV — announced 2025. A 25.7 MP back-illuminated sensor, a redesigned seven-element 28 mm-equivalent lens, 5-axis stabilisation rated to six stops, 53 GB of memory built into the camera, and a switch from full-size SD to microSD. 262g. 1,499 USD at announcement, 1,599.95 USD on Ricoh US at the time of writing.

The features that matter are not on the megapixel line. The GR has a leaf shutter, which means flash syncs at any shutter speed rather than dying at 1/180 like it does on the X-M5. It has a two-stop neutral density filter built into the camera on a menu item. It wakes up and takes a photo in about six-tenths of a second. And it has snap focus, which skips autofocus entirely — you pick a distance, 1.5 m or 2.5 m or 5 m, press the shutter all the way down, and the camera shoots at that distance immediately with no hunting.

That last one is the whole camera. Snap focus plus a lens that retracts flush plus a body that survives a trouser pocket adds up to a camera you can draw and fire before anyone registers that you are holding a camera. Nothing else does that. The X100VI is a lovely object and it is not remotely the same tool.

The bit the review videos leave out

A GR is not weather sealed and the lens barrel moves in and out every time you switch it on, which pumps air, and with the air comes dust. Dust on a GR sensor is not a rumour or a bad-luck story, it is the defining ownership complaint of the entire line, and the r/ricohGR archive is full of people photographing the blobs in their skies.

"It needs weather sealing!! Can’t pay 1000€ for a sensor full of dust forever."

The usual workaround is the GH-3 adapter tube plus a filter over the front, which seals the barrel. It also adds about 20 mm to the front of the camera, and that quietly undoes the argument the whole camera is built on. Someone made exactly this point in a size-comparison thread against the X-M5.

"Considering that I always have the lens adapter on the Ricoh due to the dust issue, the size difference isn't that significant."

Then there is the rest of it. Battery is rated at 200 shots on the GR III and 250 on the GR IV, against 330 on the X-M5. Video tops out at 1080/60p on all three GR bodies, in 2026, on a camera that costs more than a thousand dollars. The phone app is widely disliked enough that people pay for third-party alternatives. None of this is secret, and the sub is refreshingly blunt about it.

"The autofocus, dust, video, and battery have always been pointed out as pain points in everything I’ve seen."

The GR IV launch made this worse rather than better. The subreddit moderators had to pin an issues megathread within weeks: misaligned aperture blades, mode dials that jam, lenses that will not retract when the camera powers down, cameras that freeze until you pull the battery, front dials that skip a stop. Several owners went through two copies and gave up.

One owner posted Ricoh's reply after asking about the aperture blades on a 1,500 euro camera, and it is worth reading before you pre-order anything.

"I understand the concern but the fact that the aperture in not perfectly round is not considered a defect."

Autofocus is the other one. Ricoh added phase detection back in the GR III and improved it again in the GR IV, and it is still the weakest part of the camera by a distance. A Canon and Sony shooter who bought a GR IV described it plainly, and note that they kept the camera anyway.

"I was absolutely devastated by how awful the AF is on the GRIV. It’s borderline unusable for quick snaps, which must be why they market the snap manual focus mode as an alternative."

To be fair to the camera, plenty of GR IV owners got a clean copy and love it. One first-time GR buyer coming from a Sony a7R V called the RAW files shockingly good and the autofocus better than expected, while noting in the same post that he had read enough bad reviews to feel lucky. That is a strange sentence to write about a 1,500 dollar camera.

Where the Fujifilm X-M5 fits in

The X-M5 is the smallest interchangeable-lens body Fujifilm currently makes. 355g, 26.1 MP X-Trans IV, and — this is the part people miss — X-Processor 5, which is the same processor doing the same deep-learning subject detection as an X-T5 three times the price. It launched at 799 USD and drifted up to around 900 since.

  • 355g body, no in-body stabilisation, no viewfinder, no weather sealing.
  • X-Processor 5 with subject detection for people, animals, birds, cars, bikes, aircraft and trains.
  • 6.2K open-gate video at 30p with F-Log2, 10-bit 4:2:2, from a body that costs less than a GR III.
  • Nine film simulations including REALA ACE and Nostalgic Neg., on a dial.
  • 330 shots per charge, one SD UHS-I slot, flash sync at 1/180.

The no-viewfinder thing gets held against the X-M5 constantly, and in a GR comparison it stops being a complaint. The GR has no viewfinder either. Both cameras are composed on a rear screen at arm's length, which means the usual objection cancels out and you can judge them on everything else. The X-M5's screen also flips out, which the GR's does not.

The most useful thread I found on this was someone with an X-T5 who owned a GR IIIx for two years, bought an X-M5 as the small camera, and then could not work out what the Ricoh was still for.

"The Ricoh is a great little camera but it just doesn't produce that fuji look, or have that fuji tactile feel and it doesn't inspire me (as daft as that sounds)."

How big they really are

I am not going to pretend this one away. A GR III is 257g and 33.2 mm deep with the lens retracted. An X-M5 with the smallest lens Fujifilm makes is 439g and roughly twice as deep, and the lens does not retract into anything. That is not a close call and everyone who has held both says so.

"GRIII is pocketable for EDC without a doubt, and the Fuji w/ 27mm lens is not."

The same person owns both and wrote the most balanced summary of the pair I have read anywhere, which ends with a line I have quoted at people several times since: function versus ease. The Ricoh is the more capable tool once you have learned to work around it. The Fuji is the one that gets the shot without a negotiation.

So the question is not which is smaller. It is whether the difference between pocket and small bag changes what you actually carry. For some people it genuinely does, and those people should buy the Ricoh and stop reading.

"the XM5 is already too big to fit in your pocket. It's not “ninja” enough to pull out and shoot discreetly."

Four small lenses that get you close

Fujifilm's crop factor is 1.5, so the arithmetic is easy. A GR III is 28 mm equivalent, which is an 18 mm lens on a Fuji. A GR IIIx is 40 mm equivalent, which is 27 mm. Both of those exist as small primes, and there are two more worth putting on the list. Here they are in order of how closely they impersonate a Ricoh.

XF 18mm f/2: the same view as a GR III

27 mm equivalent against the GR III's 28 mm, 116g, 33.7 mm long, and a stop faster than any GR lens. This is the closest match on the list in terms of what you see through it, and the one nobody talks about because it is a 2012 design with slow, audible DC-motor autofocus and corners that stay soft until about f/5.6.

None of that matters much for the job at hand. Snap-focus street work lives at f/5.6 to f/8 anyway, where this lens is genuinely good and low on distortion, and its 0.18 m close focus beats every GR body except in dedicated macro mode. Buy it used. Fujifilm still lists it at nearly 700 dollars new, which for a fourteen-year-old lens is not a serious number, and the used market is full of them.

XF 23mm f/2.8: the modern one

35 mm equivalent, so this one does not match either GR, and it is on the list because it is the best small Fuji lens by some distance. 90g, 23 mm long, weather sealed, an aperture ring, an 11-blade diaphragm, 0.20 m close focus, and an optical formula designed in 2025 to resolve for a 40 MP sensor. Around 500 USD.

35 mm sits between the two Ricohs and is the focal length most people end up preferring once they stop chasing the one their favourite YouTuber uses. It is also the X100 view, so if you have ever liked an X100VI frame, this is that. I wrote a longer piece about this lens on the X-E5 and everything in it applies to the X-M5 for 400 dollars less.

XF 27mm f/2.8: the closest thing to a GR IIIx

41 mm equivalent against the GR IIIx's 40 mm, and at 84g it is the smallest autofocus lens Fujifilm sells. This is the combination people actually photograph next to their Ricohs, and the one the size threads are arguing about. Around 450 USD.

The trade is real and the owner who shoots both put it better than I can. Ricoh's fixed lens is a better lens. The Fuji focuses when the light goes.

"If I could put the GR lens on the Fuji I would take that over the 27mm for sure. The 27mm minimum focus distance is like 14” so I definitely miss the macro & close-up versatility and the focus motor is kinda loud and clunky. But, the Fuji will accurately autofocus outdoors at night."

Voigtländer 27mm f/2: snap focus, by hand

This is the one that surprised me, and the reason is worth spelling out. Snap focus is zone focusing with a menu in front of it: you set a distance, the camera respects it, autofocus never runs. The Voigtländer is a manual-focus lens with a focus tab, third-stop aperture clicks and a hard infinity stop, which is the same idea implemented in metal. Set it to three metres at f/8 and the lens is now a snap-focus lens that never hunts, never wakes up slowly, and never changes its mind.

It is also 40 mm equivalent, so it sits exactly where the GR IIIx sits, at f/2 rather than f/2.8, in 120g of all-metal barrel with electronic contacts that feed EXIF and focus peaking back to the body. It costs about 595 USD, has no weather sealing, and the focus throw is short enough that everything past a few metres is compressed into a small arc of rotation — annoying for precision work, ideal for the hyperfocal shooting this section is about. I have written up a week of shooting it separately.

What each one costs

This is the part where the argument used to be easy and no longer is. Fujifilm has raised prices, Ricoh has raised prices harder, and the two lines have converged. Using current US list prices and an 899 dollar X-M5 body:

  • X-M5 + XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR — about 1,350 USD, 439g. Against a GR IIIx at 1,249.95 and 262g.
  • X-M5 + XF 23mm f/2.8 R WR — about 1,400 USD, 445g. No GR equivalent at this focal length.
  • X-M5 + Voigtländer 27mm f/2 — about 1,495 USD, 475g. Against a GR IV at 1,599.95 and 262g.
  • X-M5 + a used XF 18mm f/2 R — about 1,300 USD, 471g. Against a GR III at 1,049.95 and 257g.

So you are not saving money. You are spending roughly GR money to get a mount, and what the mount buys you is that the next lens costs 450 dollars instead of 1,250. A GR III owner who decides they want the 40 mm view has to buy a second camera. That is the actual argument, and it is a better one than the price argument ever was.

Where the Fuji falls short

  • Fit in a trouser pocket. Not with any lens, not with the 84g one, not ever.
  • Sync flash above 1/180. The GR’s leaf shutter syncs at any speed, which is why daylight fill-flash people stay on Ricoh.
  • Cut two stops of light on a menu item. The X-M5 has no built-in ND, so bright-daylight wide-open work needs a screw-in filter.
  • Stabilise anything. No IBIS, and none of these four lenses has OIS, so shutter speed is your only lever.
  • Wake, focus and fire in six-tenths of a second with one hand while the camera is still coming out of your jacket.

Where the GR falls short

  • Change focal length. This is the whole point and it is worth more than the size advantage for most people.
  • Track a moving subject. The X-M5 recognises and follows people, animals and vehicles; the GR finds a face if the light is kind.
  • Shoot usable video. 1080/60p against 6.2K open-gate 10-bit with F-Log2 is not a comparison.
  • Give you Fuji colour. Recipes exist for the GR and they are decent, but a shooter in the buying-advice thread put it well: the GR files always look digital.
  • Flip a screen out, run built-in stereo microphones, or take a full-size SD card if it is a GR IV.

Which one should you buy

Buy the Ricoh if the pocket is non-negotiable. If your honest assessment is that a camera in a bag is a camera left at home, then the GR III or GR IIIx solves a problem no Fuji solves, and the dust and the battery and the sad little app are the price of admission. Buy used or grey market, budget for the GH-3 adapter and a filter on day one, and set snap focus to 2.5 m before you leave the house.

Buy the X-M5 and one small lens for basically everything else. It focuses in the dark, it holds three times the film simulations, it shoots video that people will actually watch, the battery lasts a day, and in two years when 40 mm has stopped being interesting you buy a lens instead of a camera. A commenter in the r/Cameras thread compressed the whole decision into four lines and I have not improved on it since.

"You want to carry the camera in your trouser pocket, GR. You don’t need video, GR. You want to have more focal length of choice, XM5. You want decent video, XM5."

And if you want my actual pick from the four lenses: the XF 23mm f/2.8 R WR. It is not the closest match to either Ricoh, it is the best lens on the list, it is weather sealed, and 35 mm is the focal length you will still be shooting in five years. Put it on an X-M5 and you have a 445g camera that does ninety percent of what a GR does and everything a GR does not. Start with the GR IV issues thread, then look at the X-M5 review, and then go and take some photographs instead of reading about cameras.

Amazon links in this piece are affiliate search links, so if you buy through one I get a small cut at no extra cost to you. They point at search results rather than single listings, because product pages rot and a search page still works in a year. Prices quoted are US list at the time of writing and they move around more than they used to.