Is the Ricoh GR IIIx Still a Good Choice in 2026?
A Fishmonger at a Market in Mexico City
I've been shooting with the GRiiix for years now, and every time Ricoh puts out a new model, I get the same round of messages: should I sell mine and upgrade? Now that the GR IV has been out for a while and the dust has settled, I figured it was time to actually answer that question instead of dodging it — both for you, and for myself.
Short version: no, I'm not upgrading. Here's why.
The state of the GR line in 2026
A Man Shields His Head from the Sun in the Mexico City Centro Historico
Ricoh discontinued the standard GR III last summer to make room for the GR IV, but the GRiiix — the 40mm-equivalent sibling I shoot — got a stay of execution. There's still no GR IVx on the roadmap, which means the GRiiix remains Ricoh's current answer for anyone who wants that slightly tighter, more deliberate framing instead of the 28mm wide-angle street photography look. It's not a leftover model quietly waiting to be killed off. It's still the flagship for its focal length, and Ricoh is still selling it new.
That matters, because it changes the question from "is this camera obsolete" to "is this camera still competitive against Ricoh's own newer hardware." Different question, and a more interesting one.
What actually changed with the GR IV
A Vendor Peers Over a Stack of Meat at a Mexico City Market
To be fair to the GR IV, it's a real update, not a paint job. Ricoh redesigned the lens, moved to a new 25.7-megapixel back-illuminated sensor, and swapped in the GR ENGINE 7 processor. Startup time dropped to around 0.6 seconds, shake reduction now claims up to six stops of compensation instead of four, and max ISO climbed to a frankly absurd 204,800. Autofocus is noticeably snappier in real-world use, and there's a new companion app for wireless transfer and settings control. If you've never owned a GR body before and you're deciding which one to buy today, the GR IV is the objectively newer piece of engineering.
The GRiiix, by comparison, is running Ricoh's older GR ENGINE 6, a 24-megapixel sensor, three-axis stabilization rated for four stops, and a startup time closer to 0.8 seconds. On paper, it's the "worse" camera on almost every spec sheet line.
I'm deliberately not going to spend much time on the focal length difference between the two — 40mm versus the GR IV's 28mm — because that's a matter of personal shooting style, not an upgrade or a downgrade. Pick your angle of view, not your generation.
Why the spec sheet doesn't tell the real story
A Shoe Shiner Waits for Customers in Mexico City
Here's the thing about that "worse" spec sheet: none of it has actually cost me a shot. Every image in this post came off the GRiiix, most of them from a single afternoon working through a Mexico City market — fish stalls, a butcher counter, a chair-caning stand on a side street, a demonstration in the zócalo. None of these were slow-motion, deliberate setups. They were the kind of grab-it-or-lose-it moments that street photography actually consists of, and a 0.8-second startup and four stops of stabilization got me there every time.
This is the same argument I made in Can We Stop with the Megapixels, Please? — more resolution and more headline numbers stop mattering once a sensor clears a certain threshold, and 24 megapixels cleared that threshold years ago. The GR IV's 25.7MP sensor isn't giving me detail I was missing. It's giving me file sizes I don't need.
Where the GR IV's upgrades would actually show up — faster autofocus, better low-light stabilization — are real, but they're incremental improvements to a camera that was already fast and already stable enough for how I shoot. I wrote about stripping settings back rather than adding complexity in The Power of Simplicity, and the same logic applies to gear decisions. The GRiiix already gets out of my way. Faster isn't the same as better if the thing you already have isn't holding you back.
The price math doesn't help the GR IV's case
Beach-goers in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
The GR IV launched at a real jump over what the GR III cost at launch, and the GRiiix — even at current street prices — remains the more affordable way into a GR body with an APS-C sensor. Refurbished units and used listings only widen that gap. If you're deciding where to put your money in 2026, that price difference buys you a lot of shooting days, or a lot of prints, or honestly just a lot less guilt about pulling the camera out in weather you probably shouldn't.
I said something close to this in Reps on the Street: most of the value in this hobby comes from putting in the hours, not from the hardware. A camera you already own and already trust is worth more to your actual photography than a camera you're still learning.
So who should actually buy the GR IV?
I don't want to overstate the case here. If you're shooting a lot of low-light work, if autofocus speed has genuinely cost you frames on your current body, or if you're buying into the GR system for the first time with no existing gear to sell, the GR IV is a legitimately strong camera and the improvements aren't nothing. This isn't a rant against the new model. It's a case for not fixing what isn't broken.
But if you already own a GRiiix and you're on the fence about "upgrading" — my honest answer is that you're not missing much. The things that make street photography work are the same things I outlined in Four Things I Wish I Knew Earlier About Street Photography: a clear point of view, patience, and reps. None of that comes bundled with a new sensor.
I'll keep shooting mine until it physically stops working. If that changes, you'll hear about it here first.