For about a year my answer to “which small Fuji should I buy” was easy. The X100VI. I owned one, I loved it, and I sent that recommendation to half the people in my phone.
Then I sold it. I kept the Fujifilm X-E5 instead, and I have not looked back once.
This is not a spec-sheet opinion from someone who read the brochure. I lived with both cameras, and I still have both 23mm lenses on my shelf. So I wrote the whole thing up on Which Fuji, and this is the short version.
Same pictures, smaller decision
Here is the part that made the choice easy: you do not give up the X100VI look when you switch. Both cameras use the same 40.2MP X-Trans 5 HR sensor, the same X-Processor 5, the same colour science. Line them up spec against spec and there is almost nothing between them. Put a 23mm lens on the X-E5 and the files basically are X100VI files.
The size argument that keeps people loyal to the X100VI also falls apart. The X-E5 body is 445g. The little 23mm f/2.8 pancake adds 90g. That is about 535g together, against 521g for the X100VI with its fixed lens. Same pocketable feeling, except now I have a lens mount.
Three things that actually moved me
The sensor being equal, it came down to how the camera feels in my hands.
I wanted to change lenses. Some days I want 35mm tight on a subject, some days the wide feel of 18mm, some days the 56mm portrait look. On the X100VI I could only crop in my head. On the X-E5 I change the glass.
The film simulation dial. There is a real dial on the top plate with a little window, so I flick to Classic Chrome for the street or Acros for a grey day without ever opening a menu. The X100VI has the same simulations buried in software. Under my thumb, I play with the looks far more.
And it simply looks better to me. Clean top plate, flat rangefinder shape. It feels like a small serious camera, not a fashion object. TechRadar called it more premium than the X100VI, almost a baby GFX100RF, and I agree.
The real question is the lens
This is what people actually ask me. Fuji makes two small 23mm primes, both weather sealed, both cheap by camera standards, and I own both.
The 23mm f/2.8 pancake is my daylight lens. Tiny, very sharp, and it is the one that makes the X-E5 disappear into a jacket. It is slower to focus and it makes the camera slow to wake and sleep, because the whole lens retracts. Worth knowing before you buy.
The 23mm f/2 is my low-light and blur lens. One stop wider, which is the same f/2 as the X100VI, so if you truly want to match that camera this is the honest match. Faster, quieter stepping motor, and it is what I use for my kids and for video.
My rule is one sentence. Daylight is f/2.8, blur and dark are f/2.
What I gave up, and how I got it back
The X-E5 drops the built-in ND filter and the built-in flash. I got both back cheaply. A variable ND screws onto the f/2 so I can shoot wide open at noon, and a tiny Viltrox TTL flash lives in the bag for low light and fill. Two small extras close the last gap with the X100VI.
Kevin Mullins, a former Fujifilm ambassador who has shot every X100 since the first, lands in the same place: for a lot of photographers the X-E5 with a small prime is the smarter, more versatile choice. That is exactly the road I took.
The full breakdown — every lens quirk, the reviewer quotes, the flash and filter picks, and the honest weaknesses — is on Which Fuji: Why the Fujifilm X-E5 is the X100VI alternative, and which 23mm lens to get.
And if you are still stuck between bodies, Which Fuji is the little site I built for exactly that WhatsApp message I was tired of retyping.