DPReview heat tests the R5 and R6: Not faulty, but could be better

There has been quite an amount of fury over the overheating on the R5 and R6.  It's a problem for hybrid shooters or video only shooters. This is most certainly something Canon needs to get in front of.

DPreview did some exhaustive testing with the R5 and the R6, and they found using the cameras in hybrid situations where you are flipping back and forth from video to stills, is certainly a problem.  They do note that both cameras behave according to specifications laid out by Canon - so technically, you may not like it - but the cameras are not faulty.  They aren't suitable for the tasks that most of us figured they would excel at either though, so they are more fundamentally flawed.

As Jorden so eloquently stated;

While I enjoyed most aspects of using these two cameras, I have no intention of using either of them as a primary video camera. They would be great for grabbing occasional, very high quality video clips, but I’d never want to rely on them for paid work.

This is the core problem.  It doesn't matter if you shoot mostly still and some video, as soon as you add video into the mix, the two cameras simply are not reliable enough for professional usage.  Some will work around this (aka use external recording), the rest of us will have to wait to see what Canon does for this.  We have all seen with the EOS R that Canon is focusing a lot of attention on the R mount.  I suspect we'll see firmware updates before long to assist with heating issues, so if still is primarily your focus. We hope that Canon addresses this soon.

Should you still purchase the R5 or R6? It's really hard to say if you need the camera right now for video - maybe not.  But the R5 is most certainly Canon's best landscape camera to date.  Able to shoot up to 12 fps at 45MP with a very high dynamic range, and even with lower DR, it can shoot up to 20fps.  Combine that with excellent AF, and you have a fantastic stills camera.  Let's not forget that.  So if you are primarily a stills shooter, the R5 and R6 are very capable cameras.

• Dpreview