Olympus PEN E-PL9

Style may still be the priority for the PEN E-PL9, but there are a handful of key changes under the skin too.

The E-PL9 is one of the latest options intended to sway smartphone users towards more serious photography. Both its design and feature set broadly mirror what the previous E-PL8 offered, with a swinging LCD screen still its main party trick, although the headline changes are more significant than we often get at this level.

These include a beefier TruePic VIII processing engine – the same, in fact, as that inside the flagship E-M1 Mark II – together with 4K video recording, a built-in flash and Bluetooth. The focusing system has also been upgraded, from the E-PL8’s 81 points to 121 here, although this is still based on contrast detect AF technology, rather than the hybrid phase- and contrast-detect AF system as some of the camera’s peers (and the flagship OM-D E-M1 Mark II).