This is my full review with real world experience of the Ricoh GRIV. I’ve owned the Ricoh GRIII for about 1,5 years before I decided to upgrade to the Ricoh GRIV over a half year ago. In this review I’ll tell you more about my experience with the Ricoh GRIV and how it compares to the Ricoh GRIII – and other options in the same price class.
Ricks Reviews verdict
Pros
- Very compact – easily fits in a pocket
- Great image quality
- Good high-ISO performance
- Very sharp lens
- Very good in-body stabilisation
Cons
- Autofocus is faster than GRIII but still no match for modern mirrorless systems
- No EVF and the screen can be a bit hard to see in bright light
- Not weather sealed
Best for:
Great ‘every day carry’ camera with magnificent image quality. Great for street photography, but also perfect for recoding everyday life, travel and family activities.
Not ideal for:
Sports, action or wildlife. The fixed 28mm equivalent lens isn’t the best option for these kinds of photography. And the autofocus would struggle.
Would I buy it again?
Yes, the Ricoh GRIV is one of the most compelling compact high quality camera’s available today.
Why the Ricoh GRIV (and why replace the GRIII)
I’ve went back and forth many times before buying my GRIII a good 2 years ago. My main camera’s are big and bulky units that aren’t always a pleasure to lug around for a whole day. Mainly when I’m going out and photography isn’t my main goal I tend to leave the big camera’s at home. So for several years I’ve been trying to find that one small camera that is enough of an upgrade compared to my iPhone, while being small enough to take with you all the time.
In my search I’ve tried the Sony RX100V (and even the quirky RX0 mark II), but found the images out of the 1 inch sensor too flat and not enough of an upgrade compared to my iPhone. I’ve tried the Nikon Z fc, which is a fun camera, but doesn’t fit in my pocket. I even tried an old Sony A7 with a 28mm f/2 prime. But that doesn’t fit in my pocket either. So the advantage over taking my main camera isn’t big enough.
Eventually I landed on the Ricoh GRIII. A magnificent camera with excellent image quality that will easily fit in your pocket. And I had a lot of fun with it, as you can read in my full review about the GRIII. And realistically I don’t believe there are many reasons to upgrade to the Ricoh GRIV. But being a reviewer I just wanted something new to try. So i took the plunge and bought a brand new Ricoh GRIV. In this review I’ll tell you if this move is worth the money.
Specifications of the Ricoh GRIV
The most important specs of the Ricoh GRIV:
- New 26 megapixel APS-C size CMOS sensor
- 18,3mm f/2.8 lens – 28mm in 35mm equivalent focal length
- Lens with 7 elements in 5 groups of which 3 aspherical
- Hybrid AF with phase- and contrast detection and face and eye focus
- 5-axis in body image stabilisation with AA filter simulation and dust removal system
- Built-in 2 stop ND filter
- 53GB internal memory + microSD card slot
- Bright 3.0 inch rear screen with touchscreen functionality
- New DB-120 battery with higher 1800 mAh capacity
- USB-C port for internal battery charging
- And apparently you can shoot even 1080p HD video with it
Comparing these to the Ricoh GRIII the most apparent upgrades are the new sensor and the addition of 53GB built-in memory. This comes at the cost of a full size SD-card slot that has been replaced with a MicroSD-card slot.
There are also a lot of bigger and smaller upgrades that you can’t see in the specs. Like the new and improved lens, upgraded IBIS system, better sensor protection to keep dust from the sensor and a new control layout.
See Ricoh website for the full list of specifications.
Body and build of the Ricoh GRIV
With this new version Ricoh has kept the very small form factor. So the body still is just about 10 by 6 cm wide and high and just over 3 cm deep. This means you can easily slip the camera in your pants pocket. And it is a lot smaller than my iPhone, even though it is thicker of course. The weight including the battery and an SD-card is about 260 grams. The camera still has a small grip on the front and a place for your thumb on the back. Combined with the low weight and balanced weight distribution this makes it easy to steadily hold the camera with one hand. And even with my big hands it is comfortable to hold for longer times.
The whole body is made of a magnesium alloy that makes the body both strong and light. For now the Ricoh GRIV is only available in black, but I’m sure Ricoh will be adding new colours in the future like they did with the GRIII. I really liked the soft brown colour of the GRIII diary edition, I hope they will bring that back for the GRIV too. The camera comes with a minimal wrist strap, but I’ve swapped that one out for the Peak Design strap because that is nicer to use.
Dusty (sensor, not Springfield)
One of the problems of the GRIII is dust on the sensor. The GRIII is quite susceptible to pulling in dust with its lens system that attaches itself to the sensor. The camera’s dust removal system is clearly not strong enough to solve this. For the GRIV Ricoh has improved sealing and promises that it will be less of a problem. But it still has the same kind of lens system so while better it probably isn’t completely free of this problem. There is also no weather sealing in the GRIV. So you have to keep the camera protected from rain and water.
A small personal niggle is that the holes for attaching your strap are very small on the GRIV. This makes it a true challenge to mount the Peak Design anchors on the camera.
Controls and handling
When handling a Ricoh GR camera you instantly notice that the camera has been designed by photographers for taking photo’s and just photo’s. Ricoh doesn’t make any concessions to the photo controls for extra convenience when shooting video at all. There is a button to switch between photo and video-mode, but that is the one and only button that’s all alone on the left side of the camera. This tells you all you need to know about the GR’s video capabilities (they are virtually non-existing, just use your phone instead).
The control layout on all GR camera’s is completely designed so that you can control almost everything one handed. Therefor all relevant controls on the GRIV are also on the right side of the body. On the top you have the on/off button that glows green when the camera is on. In front of that you’ll find the large shutter button and next to it the mode-wheel – that is lockable to prevent unwanted operation. On top of the front grip there is a control wheel and a second control wheel is on the back of the camera, making it easy to control functions like aperture and shutter speed. New is that the back control wheel can be fully rotated, on the GRIII you could only rock it left and right.
The old – new lay out
On the back of the GRIV Ricoh has (partially) gone back to the control layout of older models that came before the GRIII. With the most noticeable change being the +/- rocker on the upper right side of the back, by default this controls the exposure compensation. Many GRIII users missed this function. I have to admit I’m personally not a fan of the rocker on the back since I tend to use it unintentionally. In the first days of using the camera I suddenly had quite some images coming out extremely over- or underexposed, only to find my exposure compensation was completely off. Especially in bright light it is hard to notice on the back screen and the small exposure compensation indicator can also go unnoticed for some time. That’s why I’ve reprogrammed exposure compensation to one of the control wheels for now.
Controls on the back of the Ricoh GRIV
I’m glad that Ricoh has kept the quick-adjustment menu controlled by the back control wheel. When you push the wheel you open a quick menu that can be personalised with different options. By default this controls things like the film simulation selection and the focus setting. This makes adjusting these settings quick and easy.
On the back you’ll also find controls to switch the camera to Macro mode, to control ISO, White Balance and drive mode. And there is an FN button that can be programmed for different settings. I have it set to use the digital zoom between 28mm, 35mm and 50mm.
All this makes the Ricoh GRIV easy to use and control. You might think that on a body this small it is hard to quickly adjust settings. But because of the smart choices Ricoh has made this isn’t the case at all. The lay out is easy to learn and even the menu structure is clean and simple. In my GRIII review I said it wasn’t up to Leica levels, but it is close. And that is also true for the GRIV.
Program Auto EX
Despite the funky name this option is a great addition to the Ricoh GRIV’s control lay out. When you want to keep things simple – for instance for street photography – you have the option to lock the control wheel in the P or Program position. In this mode the camera, like any modern camera, will choose the best combination of shutter speed and aperture for you while you keep control over things like exposure compensation and ISO. But if the camera choose something not fitting your shot you’d normally have to switch out of P mode to go to aperture of shutter speed priority. Not with the Ricoh GRIV. With the new Program Auto EX function you can directly switch to aperture priority or shutter speed priority without changing modes. You just have to rotate either the front or back dial to adjust the preferred setting.
Speed
On of the acclaimed improvements Ricoh has made on the GRIV is the quicker start-up time. It’s true, this camera can go from off to the first image faster than anything else on the market. In a blink of an eye the camera turns on and extends the lens. And virtually immediately after that you can take the first image – the specs say it takes just 0,6 seconds. Because the lens protection is built in you don’t even have to take a cover off. I have to admit that I don’t see much of a difference with the GRIII – that camera did it in 0,8 seconds which was already very fast. But it is safe to say that the camera will not be the reason you miss a shot.
In continuous mode the camera will take up to 4 images per second. Fast enough for what it is, but by no means very impressive.
Autofocus
Autofocus on the Ricoh GRIV is good. Nothing more and nothing less. It doesn’t come close to a modern mirrorless camera. With the GRIII is felt like the AF-system itself was the limiting factor, the phase and contrast detection took their time to figure out what to focus on. In the GRIV I have the idea that the sensor’s phase detection and the contrast detection are much quicker, but now the lens is the weakest link in the chain. It takes a while for the lens to move to the right position. Still, the whole system is snappier than it was on the GRIII. And you can help the system by using the focus limiter, that can be set to near or far to prevent the lens from moving through the whole range. But I’ve never felt the need to do so.
That being said, the autofocus is fast enough for most things you’ll shoot with a camera like this. If you are trying to shoot sports and action with this I think you have made the wrong choice. For general shooting, street photography and travel and everyday life the autofocus is going to be more than fast enough. Just don’t try to use tracking AF, since that is quite disappointing.
Snap
If the autofocus can’t keep up with you there is a work-around called snap focus. This is also included in earlier GR models. You can set a desired focusing distance, for instance 2,5 meters, in the menu. Now when you fully depress the shutter button at once without letting the camera focus by half pressing first it will revert to the set ‘snap’ distance. This way you you always have the option to quickly make the camera focus at the set distance, never losing a shot due to the AF being too slow.
A new addition is SN mode on the mode dial. This will set the camera to the desired snap focusing distance but will also set it to a preset depth of field setting. This bypasses the autofocus and aperture setting completely. You set the focusing distance and choose one of 3 depth of field settings and after that every image in the SN mode is taking with that setting. This is very fast and great for zone focusing and street photography.
Stabilisation
Ricoh has added 5 axis stabilisation to the GRIV. This is an upgrade from the 3 axis system in the GRIII. The new system promises up to 6 stops of stabilisation in the centre of the image. This is an improvement of 2 stops compared to the GRIII, which already had very impressive stabilisation. Combined with the wide angle lens I have no problem getting sharp images anywhere from 1/5 to 1/10th of a second and up, without much effort. If you stabilise your body against something and really try you can even go much longer before the image starts getting unusable. This is also great when using the built-in ND filter for long exposures.
Built-in ND filter
As with the GRIII the GRIV also has a built-in 2 stops ND filter. This is applied automatically by the camera if the shutter speed exceeds the rated 1/4000th of a second for the mechanical shutter.
With the new 1.11 firmware the regular Ricoh GRIV also gets the electronic shutter mode introduced with the GRIV Monochrome. The electronic shutter makes shutter speeds of up to1/16000th of a second possible. This comes with some limitations though, for instance you can’t use a flash and the stabilisation is turned off. Both might not be relevant at the high shutter speeds you’ll be using it for. But using the electronic shutter also introduces quite some rolling shutter, making panned images or images of fast moving objects look warped. This is the result of the rather slow read-out speed of the sensor. So in most cases I think you are better off using the built-in ND filter.
The ND filter also has an option to activate it manually This is great for using slower shutter speeds during the day, for instance to smooth-out water of blur moving people. Combined with the magnificent stabilisation you’ll be able to take images that would normally require a tripod and separate ND-filters. The image below for instance was shot hand-held at 1/8th seconds using the built-in ND-filter and at f/16. It’s hard to judge due to the compression of images on my website, but it is still sharp enough to be printed.
Image quality – the new sensor
The Ricoh GRIV has a, certainly for the size of the camera, big APS-C sensor. This is of course what helps the camera perform far above its own size- and weight class. The sensor doesn’t have an AA filter, so no potential sharpness is lost due to softening by the anti aliasing filter. By default the camera has AA-simulation system turned on. To get the sharpest possible images you can turn this off, but that introduces the risk of moire.
Ricoh introduced a new and improved sensor in the Ricoh GRIV. The spec-bump is limited compared to the sensor in the Ricoh GRIII, going from 24,24 megapixel to 25,74 megapixel. The biggest difference is that the new sensor is back-side illuminated. This should lead to slightly better low light performance. It looks like the new sensor is the same that Ricoh/ Pentax use in the K-3III, where it has proven to be a capable and good performing sensor.
Low light performance
The combination of the reasonably bright f/2.8 lens, the effective stabilisation and the good high ISO performance make this camera capable of taking very nice images in low light. Especially when you don’t have to rely on a faster shutter speed to freeze the image this gives you a lot of creative freedom. The sensor is perfectly capable of delivering very nice images up to ISO6400 and even at ISO12800 images are still usable.
Therefor I’ve got my auto-ISO set to go up to ISO6400 and in a pinch I have no problem extending. I’d rather have a noisy image than one that is unusable because of motion blur. The JPEG engine cleans up noise quite well and. And with tools like PureRAW you can clean up noise in DNG RAW files even better.
Dynamic Range
The Ricoh GRIV delivers impressive dynamic range, I guess somewhere in the 12-13 EV range. I don’t think it is far behind my full frame mirrorless camera’s. That is truly impressive for a camera this small. I notice I can easily underexpose an image about 1-2 stops and can recover the shadows without any problems. I have the feeling the GRIV outperforms the GRIII in this regard.
This makes it easy to protect the highlights and works perfectly for landscape images or other images with high contrast. To extract the maximum dynamic range you have to keep the ISO as low as possible, but that is true for any camera.
Image quality – the new lens
Ricoh has redesigned the lens for the Ricoh GRIV, especially focusing on better corner sharpness. I never missed anything when it came to (corner-)sharpness in the GRIII, but I do notice that the GRIV is marginally sharper. Don’t expect a night-and-day difference though, you are talking good to excellent.
The overall sharpness of the Ricoh lens is very good. Right from f/2.8 the centre of the image is as sharp as you can ask for. I never feel the need to stop down to improve sharpness. So I shoot most of my images wide open at f/2.8. I only ever stop down to increase the depth of field.
The impressive sharpness of the lens make the GRIV an excellent all-round camera. You can just as easily use it for some landscape photography as you can for street photography.
Bokeh & Macro
It’s a little strange to talk about bokeh in a modestly fast f/2.8 wide angle lens on an APS-C sensor. Because, in regular photography you don’t have many options to blur the background. To get some background blur you need to get close to your subject. When you do, you’ll notice you can get quite close with a minimum focusing distance of 10 cm (about 4 inches). When you get closer to your subject you get a pleasant looking background blur/ bokeh. The out of focus area looks smooth and highlights are mostly well rounded and don’t have a strong soap bubble look. Because of the limited maximum aperture the highlights are rather small, but also don’t show very pronounced union rings or other defects. I’d say this is by far the most you can expect in this regard from a wide-angle lens.
And besides that the GRIV does have a small trick up it’s sleeve. You can engage the macro mode by pressing the macro button on the back multi-controller. This reduces the minium focusing distance from 10cm to 6 cm (2.36 inch) from the sensor. The camera does this by moving the whole focusing unit forward, so in macro mode you can’t focus at infinity anymore. But at 6 cm you can get an impressive 0,35x magnification. Not quite a macro set-up but close enough to get some very detailed and good looking close-up images. Even more impressive is that images in macro range have the same sharpness as in normal shooting.
Image quality – film simulations
With the popularity of Fujifilm camera’s with their film simulation modes it is only logical that Ricoh has kept their recipes in the Ricoh GRIV. In the GRIII you have 12 preset recipes to choose from, the GRIV add two new ones: Cinema (yellow) and Cinema (Green). Besides that the classic vivid, monotone, soft monotone, hard monotone and Hi-Contrast are also available. The same goes for the more outspoken and less serious modes like Bleach Bypass, Retro, Cross Processing and HDR. And my favourites on the GRIII, positive and negative film are also present again.
Ricoh has re-tuned the recipes for the GRIV so they may be a little different compared to the GRIII. But I don’t see any big differences. Positive film still looks great and stays my favourite. The new Cine (Yellow) works very well for a classic look in warm summer scenes.
Just like before you can also add personalised presets to the GRIV. It is now possible to save 3 personal settings (up from 2 on the Ricoh GRIII). You can start from a blank sheet or use one of the existing presets and start adjusting. The last option is to download the Ricoh Recipes app. This is full of user submitted presets that you can copy or use as a starting point for your own preset. This works a little different than for instance the Nikon Imaging Cloud presets. In the Ricoh system you don’t have to download anything, you just copy the settings in the app in your own preset to get the desired effect.
Battery life of the Ricoh GRIV
The Ricoh GRIII is often critiqued because of the limited battery life. In my review of the GRIII you’ll see I never found this to be a problem. When you turn the camera off between shots you can easily take up to 200 images on a single battery. Still Ricoh clearly saw an opening to improve this in the GRIV. The GRIV comes with a bigger DB-120 battery, that is rated at 1800 mAh (compared to 1350 mAh for the DB-110 used in the GRIII). This improves the CIPA rated battery life from 200 images for the GRIII to 250 images on one charge for the GRIV.
A 25% improvement feels about right, better but still not class leading. On a normal day of travel and family activities I never need to bring a spare battery since the camera will easily last for a whole day. When I go out and my sole purpose is taking photo’s I’ll drop a spare battery in my pocket. The DB-120 is bigger than the older DB-110, but still small enough to lose in a standard pants pocket.
Who is the Ricoh GRIV for?
In my Ricoh GRIII review I wrote the following, and this is still very much true for the Ricoh GRIV:
With the strange combination of high-end features and a high price in a compact body it might be hard to know who the GRIV is for. The most logical answer is: street photographers. And I agree it is a very good camera for that purpose. But limiting the camera to just that genre isn’t doing it justice. I use it as a versatile every day cary (EDC), family and travel camera and it’s performs very well for that task.
It is small enough to just bring, even when I don’t have photography as my main goal. The autofocus is more than good enough for this use and the face/ eye detection works very good for the occasional portrait.
Different versions of the Ricoh GRIV
Ricoh has introduced a few different versions of the Ricoh GRIV so far. For now these are:
- Ricoh GRIV – the base model I own and write about in this review.
- Ricoh GRIV HDF – the same sensor, lens and body as the regular GRIV but in stead of the ND-filter this model comes with Ricoh’s HDF-filter. This stands for Highlight Diffusion Filter which is exactly what this filter does. It gives the same effect as the popular Black Mist filters and diffuses highlights and softens the image. This is a fun effect that works especially well in night photography. But you’ll lose the ND filter.
- Ricoh GRIV Monochrome – a version I would really love to add to my regular GRIV. This model has a dedicated monochrome sensor that can’t record colour but only captures luminance data. This results in very clean and pure black and white images. Because the sensor doesn’t use a colour filter array in front of the sensor it is more sensitive to light and can offer higher sharpness. This version also doesn’t have a ND-filter but in stead comes with a red-filter to increase contrast in certain colours. But this doesn’t come cheap, when stripping out the option to take colour images the price goes up to 1799 euro.
For now there isn’t a version of the Ricoh GRIV with a 40mm equivalent lens like the X-model on the GRIII. But Ricoh has indicated that they are developing a new GRIVx and I expect it will be introduced sometime later in 2026 or 2027.
Ricoh GRIV vs Leica D-Lux 8 vs FujiFilm X100VI
The most important competitors for the GRIV are still the Leica D-Lux 8 and FujiFilm X100VI. There are some interchangeable lens cameras that might also be a good alternative, but most of them are bigger. Camera’s like the FujiFilm X-M5 or the Sony A6400 are quite compact by themselves, but as soon as you add even a small lens they won’t fit a normal pocket anymore.
The Leica D-Lux 8 is a very nice little camera. For me it was a serious contender to become my compact option instead of the Ricoh. The D-Lux 8 menu system is about the same as the SL2-S that I used to own, which is fantastic. It is a little bigger than the Ricoh GRIV, but in exchange it offers a 24-70mm equivalent zoom lens. You do have to accept the smaller Micro 4/3 sensor of which not the full width is used. That will have an impact on image quality (low light) and ‘depth’ of the image that is only partly compensated by the fast f/1.8-2.8 lens.
The FujiFilm X100VI is quite a lot bigger and heavier than the Ricoh GRIV (and also bigger than the D-Lux 8). The X100VI has the same size APS-C sensor as the Ricoh, with an impressive 40 megapixel resolution. And the 35mm f/2 lens is one stop faster than the Ricoh. You’ll get a hybrid viewfinder that is both optical and an EVF giving you the best of both worlds. The size is a clear negative, but the sensor, viewfinder and lens are a plus compared to the Ricoh. Autofocus seems to be on about the same level as the GRIV. You have to decide for yourself if that is worth the extra size and the extra 300 or more Euro/ Dollar investment.
Ricoh GRIV vs Ricoh GRIII
When looking at the new Ricoh GRIV you might also consider a nice second hand GRIII as an alternative. Or you already own a GRIII and consider upgrading to the GRIV.
If you ask me if upgrading from the GRIII to the GRIV is worth the money I’d say: probably not.
The Ricoh GRIV has been improved in many small ways that all add up, undeniably making it a better all-round camera than the GRIII. But this doesn’t mean it is a night-and-day difference rendering the Ricoh GRIII obsolete all at once. The overall user experience between these 2 camera’s is very much the same – as is the image quality in real world use. Unless you really need the improved AF or the better corner sharpness I’d keep using my GRIII.
When you are looking at buying a new camera the situation becomes a little different. A nice second hand GRIII still costs about 800-850 euro. A new GRIV is about 1400 euro, but also comes with a 2 year warranty that can be extended to 3 years (in the EU) for free. This still leaves quite a price difference, but with the improvements and the added long-term warranty I think it is worth the consideration.
But still I firmly believe the GRIII is worth considering, especially when you buy it second hand at dealer that offers warranty like MPB.
Conclusion
In my GRIII review I concluded that it was a magnificent every-day carry camera that shouldn’t be overlooked or just set aside as being just a street photography camera. The same is true for the Ricoh GRIV. This is a magnificent little camera that punches way above its size- and weight class. It offers extremely high image quality for the size it has, while providing advanced users with a lot of control over the image. If you plan to edit your RAW’s in post you’ll find that the images are sharp, have plenty of dynamic range and look good even at higher ISO’s. This means you can get almost pro-level quality in a 260 gram package that is smaller than your phone.
The option to use the film simulations or Ricoh Recipes is a great addition. This makes it possible to get lovely images with a personalised look straight out of the camera. No editing needed. This is great for casual travel photography or documenting family life. With little to no effort you have magnificent images. And if you shoot DNG + RAW you’ll always have to option to further refine the look.
So, should you buy the Ricoh GRIV? If you are looking for the best possible image quality that will still fit easily fit your pocket? Yes, definitely. I don’t think any other camera of this size can compete, its only real competitors like the Leica D-Lux 8 or FujiFilm X100VI have other strengths, but are also bigger.