| Image: Panasonic |
When I reviewed the Panasonic S1II, one of my biggest complaints about it was the price. It’s a very capable camera, but it was also competing against other very capable cameras that were several hundred dollars cheaper, and which didn’t ask you to give up much in return.
Now, though, things have changed a bit. Instead of selling for $3200 in the US, it’s currently listed as $2900, an approximately 9% reduction. That makes it the same price as the Sony a7 V, and only $100 more than the Canon EOS R6 III. While Panasonic’s website lists this as a sale, there’s no clear indication of an end date. B&H’s website, meanwhile, implies that this is just the new price, and, indeed, price tracking site CamelCamelCamel reports that it’s been selling at this price for about a month.
The same has happened to the S1II’s higher-resolution sibling, the S1RII. When that camera launched in February 2025, a few months before the S1II, it was listed at $3300. It’s now an even $3000, putting more distance between it and cameras like the Nikon Z8 and Canon EOS R5 II (though those cameras’ benefits over the S1RII are more obvious than with the S1II’s competitors).
Cameras frequently get cheaper as they age
In some ways, this isn’t unusual. The S1II and S1RII are over a year old now, and cameras frequently get cheaper as they age. The Nikon Z6 III is a perfect example; it launched at $2500, and is currently available for just under $2000 (which, despite its few minor flaws, is a screaming deal). This will happen to the EOS R6 III and a7 V, too, and at that time the S1II may go back to seeming like not as great a value, unless you specifically need the relatively niche features it offers that the others don’t.
This is why we typically base our pricing analysis around MSRPs; it’s not because the street price of the camera won’t change over its life, but that they typically tend to change by around the same amount, relative to the camera’s launch price and age. Still, it means that if you need to buy a camera right this moment and aren’t currently wedded to a system, the S1II makes a lot more sense than it did before. And if this truly is a change to its MSRP, and it’ll at some point go on sale even further, that could make it a very interesting option indeed.
Read our Panasonic S1II review