The Canon EOS M50 is a compact APS-C mirrorless camera. It offers very good image quality, even in dimly-lit environments, and has a relatively small, lightweight body. Its autofocus system is effective and consistent, and it has a fairly broad selection of photo and video configuration features. It has a bright, sharp, and responsive touchscreen interface that's easy to operate, even for novice users. Unfortunately, it has a short battery life and middling video quality in both FHD and 4k, so your videos may appear slightly soft and grainy, especially in poor lighting conditions, and recording in 4k incurs a severe crop.
The Canon M50 is good for travel photography. It takes fairly clear, sharp images, even in fairly dark environments, and has a responsive autofocus system that tracks subjects reliably. It's light enough to carry for extended periods, too. Unfortunately, its short battery life may not be sufficient for a full day of use.
The Canon M50 is good for landscape photography. Its fully articulated screen is bright enough to be read in direct sunlight, and it's light enough to be carried around on a hike without too much of an issue. It takes reasonably sharp images and comes with a lens that offers a reasonably flexible focal range and can let in a good amount of light. That said, its plastic construction doesn't feel especially rugged and isn't weather-sealed.
The Canon M50 is decent for sports and wildlife photography. It has a high maximum shutter speed, allowing you to capture still images of fast-moving subjects, and a consistent and quick autofocus system. Image quality is good even at relatively high ISO settings, which is good for less well-lit environments. Unfortunately, its kit lens has a short maximum zoom, and its maximum shooting speed falls short of other mirrorless cameras, so you can't shoot distinct sequences of moving subjects.
The Canon M50 is a good option for vlogging. It has a fully-articulated screen that can be oriented to face you directly and the camera itself delivers excellent overall face-tracking performance whether you're shooting in 4k or FHD. Unfortunately, it's best to stay in well-lit environments, as it exhibits significant amounts of visual noise in dark areas. While its video stabilization performance is decent in FHD, quite a bit of camera shake may be present in 4k video. Its battery life also isn't especially impressive, so you may need to keep a second battery charged for longer shooting sessions.
The Canon M50 is an alright choice for studio video. Video quality in both 4k and FHD is sub-par overall, especially in less well-lit environments, but it does have an effective and reliable autofocus system and an easy-to-use menu system. There's also a fairly broad selection of inputs and outputs for videography accessories. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a clean HDMI output or a headphone jack to accurately monitor audio levels.
The Canon M50 isn't designed for action video. While it's relatively lightweight and compact, it feels slightly cheaply-made, isn't water-resistant, and doesn't feature support for high-speed frame rate recording, so you can't generate smooth slow-motion videos. Its stabilization performance is also disappointing overall, so handheld video may have a jittery, unstable quality.
The Canon M50 comes in two color variants: 'Black' and 'White'. We tested the 'Black' variant fitted with the EF-M 15-45mm lens, and you can see its label here. We expect the 'White' variant to perform similarly overall.
You can also purchase the Canon M50 with the EF-M 55-250mm lens or without a lens at all, but we haven't tested the performance of these variants.
If you come across a differently-equipped variant, let us know in the discussions so we can update our review.