What justifies the price of the EV-1 M? Nothing. Because Leica "can".
More interesting is to ask why Leica did not initially set the price similar to a Leica Q. This also answers the original question about justification - the price is set high enough to avoid in house competition with both the Q- and the SL-series. I am convinced that this is the case especially when manufacturing of the EV-1 should be much lower than a rangefinder based M camera with more mechanical parts. With a high price tag for an EVF-based camera, Leica decided rather to compromise on the amount of new users within the M-system - for example such, who would jump ship from the fixed-lens Q-system towards EV-1 M at similar price. Similar story with the SL - this series is plagued with lower than expected sales since introduction - very different than the Q-series which might be the best selling Leica Camera series now - so Leica didn't want to risk losing even few SL series to the EV-1 M. Especially those who use the SL series always with adapted M lenses since no other option was available in the Leica environment before the EV-1 M came out - now the EV-1 M price tag is much too high in comparison to switch.
Leica was more afraid of in-house competition than getting more new customers for the EV-1 M series is my interpretation in a nutshell. This behavior is in line with Leica's strategy since the M10 and SL releases where video was left out of M cameras and only found in the SL series.
Sep 10, 2026 at 01:55 PM
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