Canon EOS M5 review: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity
Canon Camera Connect offers a useful range of functions
For the first time on a Canon camera, the EOS M5 adds low-energy Bluetooth 4.1 connectivity alongside Wi-Fi and Dynamic NFC. The idea is to maintain a permanent Bluetooth connection with your smartphone, which brings a number of benefits. Using the free Canon Camera Connect app for Android and iOS, you can use your phone as a simple remote release without having to waste time setting up a Wi-Fi connection, and with minimal impact on the battery life of either device. I found this really handy on several occasions.
Canon Camera Connect can work as either a simple bluetooth release (left) or full Wi-Fi remote
The Bluetooth connection can also seamlessly activate the camera’s Wi-Fi from your phone for higher bandwidth tasks: copying images across for sharing, or controlling the camera remotely with a live view feed. You can browse your pictures on your phone and pull across your favourites, but more unusually, you can also view them on the camera and push them to your phone.
A small button on the side of the handgrip below the HDMI port initiates a wireless connection to your smartphone, tablet or printer.
As usual with Canon, the Wi-Fi can also do rather more than just connect to a mobile device. You can print directly to a Wi-Fi enabled printer, or connect wirelessly to a smart TV to view your images. The camera remembers a list of your devices that is displayed by pressing the dedicated Wi-Fi button on the side of the grip, making it particularly easy to switch between connecting to your tablet, phone, TV or printer. In practice, this all works really well; I used the M5 with my iPhone SE, Samsung tablet and Epson printer, and everything worked flawlessly. Overall, it makes for a really straightforward, yet powerful wireless system that I consider to be the best I’ve yet used.
