I see it around €1,349.00 in a local store
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In a hobby, I spend money to buy happiness. The GR has brought me a lot of happy moments and memories. I can’t think of many other purchased that have a similar ROI for me. This thing brings me joy every time I use it.
It remains an instant preorder for me. Just as soon as my local camera store will open in a few minutes.
Still, I talked to a friend yesterday. Their partner wants to get their first camera, but there just aren’t many cheap kits available any more. Even a used kit from a few years ago easily runs €1000. This surely makes photography much less accessible than it was when I started. Or perhaps not; perhaps it’s just that the bar has been raised, and must surpass a smartphone in order to be worthwhile. And, somewhat unsurprisingly, it takes about €1000 to improve upon a €1000 smartphone (of the kind a photos enthusiast would own).
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Some smartphones can even get semi-decent bokeh nowadays with their telephoto camera/lenses. If only the ergonomics weren’t so bad. Holding a 3mm slab horizontally while pressing the screen with your thumb just sucks. Using the power button isn’t much better either since it requires force and that will screw up the composition
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At work I’ve had a few questions about my GR from interns and other young people. I swear by my GR II but struggle to recommend it. The price is just to high compared to phones, you need to be well off or extremely dedicated to photography for it to pay off. Even used are pricey. The same goes for the alternatives.
This gr iv looks good to me. I like that the rocker is back.
The major question mark is the lens! Could be a serious upgrade, forget about sensors a lens is an upgrade. Unless it’s done for parts or cost cutting reasons of course.
You can make a very decent used kit below $500: eg a DSLR + a prime lens if you want full frame, a micro 4/3 body + a pancake zoom if you want a compact yet versatile solution, etc. The choices are endless.
There are compromises of course, but being on a budget always implied that.
Dunno when you started, but when I started, the cost of film + development made photography as a hobby quite expensive (of course, you did not pay that up front, but it was a significant cost if you actually took photos 
).
My first DSLR was the Nikon D70s, cost about $1000 with a lens if I remember correctly, and had around 6MP. Sure, a toy by today’s standards, but I still have some photos I made with it that I cherish. The quick turnaround and zero cost of digital was a game changer for my learning.
Adjust that by inflation (approx $1700), which gives you an excellent kit today. But, again, $500 gets you a perfect learning kit. Getting into photography is actually very cheap today, never been cheaper, with all that superb used gear around that impressionable people with GAS are ditching.
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Yeah used dslrs are amazing value and they are technically good enough to not limit anyone.
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What I am trying very, very hard at the moment is not to buy an Olympus E-M1 ii. They go for less than 500 eur, in good condition, and it is so much camera for the money: PDAF, pre-burst, weather sealing, focus limiting, decent IBIS, good grip, gazillions of customizable buttons. It literally has everything I could ever want from a camera even if I was a much more advanced photographer.
I am not saying that this is the best choice for everyone, other people value different things and that is fine. The point I want to make is that for someone with realistic expectations, there is a used camera out there that is affordable and will capture great memories and teach a lot about photography. It may not have the latest AF or IBIS, and you may not be able to afford a fancy constant aperture zoom on a budget. But those are just convenience factors.
This does not mean that people should not buy a GR IV or an OM-3 or whatever they desire if they can afford it and are making an informed decision. It is not that much money for something you love doing. It’s just that even people on a budget are not excluded from photography at all.
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Re: the GR IV…
In Sweden the price seems to be 16690 SEK, up from 10000–12000 SEK for the GR III. So, a 67% or 39% price increase, depending on the day. 
I’m not fond of the 28 mm focal length. 35–45 mm is the sweetrange. 28 mm is so associated with the smartphone main camera focal length (which has been ~28 mm for many years).
EDIT: My point with the focal range preference was that many will likely want to wait for the GR IVx.
That’s good to hear, but unless you know you’re going to love it, it’s a risk to spend that much money. I have never held a GR in my life, so I don’t know if I will love it or just think “meh, I could have spent $2000 on one I prefer”.
You can get a decent used kit for that price, but I’m not sure I agree with your last point about the choices being endless. You can still get bargains in specific segments, such as DSLRs, but if you want, say, a compact rangefinder body, you’re looking at closer to $700 unless you go for a very old model. It’s a very annoying phenomenon that the industry is pushing 35mm like mad, yet it’s the smaller systems like APS-C and M4/3 where prices on the used market are highest relatively. If everyone wants full frame, then why can’t we get cheaper crop sensors?! (I know the reason, it’s just a rhetorical question).
I agree that beginners can get into photography still, but I think the environment has changed. You think back to the 80s and 90s and there were lots of options available at entry-level prices. They may not have had the best tech and features, but they were new and the latest models. Now, you have to shop the used market. You can get very capable cameras, but they aren’t new. This comes with risks, such as a lack of warranty, worn-out parts, deteriorated weather sealing, etc. I wish you had more choice, so you could choose to shop the used market for cameras with better specs but also choose from entry-level models that have fewer features but are brand new.
Same! I’ve had my eye on this for a while now and trying to resist. I swore that my next camera would be a compact camera for EDC, and I don’t really need to replace my X-T5 right now. But I want to get into M4/3, and this model is the best value right now. It’s cheaper than the E-M5 Mk3, GX8, GX9, GRIII, a6400…
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That’s a lot of cash…
I strongly disagree about the focal length though! 28 is my all round favourite and for the GR it’s a must to be that wide (sorry GR IIIx). A more narrow field of view would make me long for a viewfinder and it would make me use the GR more like a ‘normal’ camera. I have a normal camera and I prefer my GR all in single handed and sloppy.
My friends keep asking me whether I’d recommend my GR (or X100, or fancy prime). I don’t. It’s a very specialized tool for a very particular purpose. If they have to ask, it’s not for them.
And that is great! I want to see more of these niche products for niche needs! Most of them will not be for me, but that’s so much more interesting than the same product with five different brand labels that we see everywhere else. Shout-out to the Pixii camera, the Bastille bike, Darktable. Of course the online discourse will always lambast the specialists for not being generalists. But they’re not the target audience. The target audience instead will celebrate it!
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So did you know you would love it so much before you bought it? Based on your comment, it’s not for me because I would ask you if you recommend it, not having used one myself. But I can’t confidently say it’s not for me. I might love it too…
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I thought I needed a view finder and so I had several (mostly Fuji) ILCs before I finally broke down and got the GR and realized it was exactly what I wanted. But I wanted pocketable.
I have done a ton of research, and the GR still seems to be the only true pocketable camera with a large sensor. So that is still my number-1 reason for wanting it. There just aren’t many alternatives. It would slip in my pocket and fulfill the role that my phone is reluctantly doing.
But like you had, I have reservations about the lack of viewfinder, and to a lesser extent the fixed lens. But I think I can be fine with these concerns if the rest of the experience is great, which both you and @bastibe attest to.
The other options I’m considering (and maybe one day won’t be alternatives but rather just added to the collection 
) are the M4/3 rangefinder cameras like the Lumix GX line and Olympus PEN line. The downsides of these is that they aren’t truly pocketable, and they are all older these days. But I could just use a small sling to carry them, and I can use the M4/3 lenses interchangeably with the OM-1/3/5 that I will eventually acquire. My ideal would be something like an updated Lumix GM5, but I don’t know if this will ever be made…
But there are signs that some manufacturers are looking again at compacts, so it will be interesting to see what’s round the corner.
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Of course not. But when I bought my first GR, I knew I wanted something very small, I knew I liked a wide angle lens, I knew I could work with a fixed lens, and I had a specific use case in mind: an unobtrusive sidekick to my main camera.
I didn’t have to ask “what camera should I buy?”. If you have to ask that question, the GR is not the answer.
Granted, my set of constraints might have matched a GR/XF10/CoolpixA/X70, an X100, a GM1, an RX1, an LX100, an RX100/LX10/G7X, and perhaps even just a small prime. But the tradeoffs between these is at least a much more specific consideration, and not a general question. Anyways, I happened to try most of these over the years, and the GR was indeed the right choice for me.
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Are you sure about this? Eg consider the Nikon FM2, a “semi-professional” camera (we would call it prosumer or enthusiast today), announced at $364 in 1982. Adjust for inflation (eg using the CPI), and that price is $1240 in 2025 dollars.
Also note that real median household income grew about 30–40% during the same period in the US, so that $1240 camera is even more “affordable”; keeping the same fraction of median income you could spend $1600 on a camera to be comparable.
Frequently, memories of how affordable things used to be is just… inflation.
A lot of dealers (eg MPB) give you 6 months of warranty and a no-questions-asked return window. But sure, it is nice to buy new, but we are talking about people on a budget; they have to make compromises. Practically, cameras last for a long time, so one may entertain a small risk.
My point is that there was never a golden age of affordable but serious cameras. In fact, the kind of cameras that an enthusiast would use are either comparable or cheaper today than 3 or 4 decades ago. Yes, I understand that they are damn expensive, but that was always the case.
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You’re talking about serious cameras, but we were talking about beginners getting into photography. And I’m talking about the time when there were no phones, so the heyday of compact cameras. There were Powershots, Cybershots, the IXUS/ELPHs, the Fuji MX cameras… And there were more brands like Agfa, Yashica… Yes, they were point and shoots, but they offered varying levels of control and were still considered capable cameras. And they were affordable.
I haven’t done the maths, but I bet they were more affordable to the average person back then compared with what you pay these days for the cheapest camera from a big brand. And it makes sense because the compact camera market went away (hopefully to return) and got replaced by smartphones. So, the environment has changed.
I agree that pro and enthusiast cameras have always been expensive, but there used to be a bigger market for entry-level.
I also find it hard to believe that income has truly matched inflation, but again, I haven’t done the maths. Even if it has, then other things have changed, like the overall cost of living, making luxuries like cameras feel more unaffordable. Depending on what generation you are, you will probably have a different perspective. But I am worried for my kids who will really struggle when it comes to buying a house, car, etc.
Yes, dealers like MPB are a good option for some countries. In Canada where I am, they don’t have a presence, so we have to buy from the US MPB, and with shipping and duties, it’s rarely a good option. Buying new is often just a little more money, and then you get the full warranty.
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“It’s complicated.” This depends on the time frame, the country, and a lot more. Here in Canada, real wages have not kept up with the cost of living in the last 5 years. Going further than that requires some research. But my gut agrees with you.
This.
All depending on your country. Canadians can buy from MPB, but can’t sell there. Once you factor in exchange rate, you might as well buy new.
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Damn, pentaxrumors is saying the GR IV will be out of stock for at least a year, and strangely, fujirumors is saying there will be a monochrome GR IV.
Hey, as long as you didn’t act on selling your GR III…