National Geographic Named the Fujifilm X-E5 the Best Travel Camera: Here Is Why They Are Right

National Geographic's photo engineering team does not review cameras from behind a desk. Tom O'Brien and Eric Flynn build custom rigs, keep bodies alive through rainforest humidity and sub-zero ice sheets, and outfit the photographers the magazine sends to every corner of the planet.

For their latest field guide, they spent four months with 26 cameras to answer one question: what should you actually pack when you leave home?

Their overall winner for Best compact digital camera for travel is the Fujifilm X-E5, alongside its SLR-styled sibling the X-T50.

I will admit to some satisfaction reading that. Social media spent more than a year on the fixed-lens craze around the X100VI while I kept arguing for the other body. After a few thousand kilometers with the X-E5 on my wrist, through the sweltering alleys of southern Italy and up onto the rooftops of Istanbul, I still think the X-E5 is the most complete travel camera available today.

Here is where their testing and the road agree.

Lab tests vs. 15 kilometers on foot in Palermo

National Geographic's engineers scored autofocus speed, build quality and image quality. Travel tests other things.

Take July in Sicily. I spent two weeks in Sicily without a car, relying on regional trains, intercity coaches and my own feet. That meant 15 to 20 kilometers of walking every day in 38°C heat, through four days in Palermo, four in Catania and a week in Syracuse, with day trips to Cefalù and Taormina.

In that kind of heat, any camera system that weighs more than a bottle of water becomes an enemy. A full-frame body with a fast 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom is optically fantastic, and after three hours on the stone staircases of Alfama in Lisbon or on the sunrise hike through Love Valley in Cappadocia, it ends up locked in the hotel safe.

The best travel camera is the one still in your hand at hour six, not the one with the highest dynamic range score on a test chart.

The Fujifilm X-E5 paired with the XF 23mm f/2.8 pancake weighs under 500 grams. It sits on a slim wrist strap without pulling at your neck. You can sit down at Bar Timi in Palermo at 8:00 AM for an espresso, set it on the table, and nobody looks twice. It does not intimidate anyone and it does not read as an expensive tourist target. It looks like an old film camera.

Why the X-E5 beats the X100VI (and the X-T50) for travel

National Geographic grouped the X-E5 and the X-T50 together. For travel, two things separate them.

The interchangeable mount, and the X100VI trap

When the X100VI came out, everyone wanted one. But as I wrote in my breakdown of the X-E5 vs. X100VI, a fixed 23mm lens is a self-imposed limitation on a long journey.

The X-E5 gives you the same compact rangefinder shape and the same 40MP sensor as the X100VI. By day, the 23mm f/2.8 pancake keeps the body flat enough for a jacket pocket. When evening falls over the Bosporus in Istanbul, or you want intimate street portraits in Syracuse, you swap to the XF 35mm f/1.4 R or adapt a tiny manual vintage prime. You get a whole lens system without the bag that usually comes with it.

The rangefinder corner viewfinder vs. the X-T50 SLR hump

The X-T50 is an excellent camera (I compared the entire line in my guide on which Fujifilm camera to buy in 2026), but it has a central SLR prism bump.

The X-E5 uses a rangefinder silhouette, with the electronic viewfinder in the far left corner. Bring the camera to your right eye and your left eye stays open on the street. You see the pedestrian about to walk into your frame, you track the scooter coming down a narrow Italian alley, and you stay in the scene instead of behind it. Your face also stays visible rather than disappearing behind a black box, which changes how people react to being photographed.

What Nat Geo missed: leaving the laptop at home

National Geographic praised the camera's image quality and handling. They left out the thing that changes a trip the most: you do not need a computer.

With Sony, Nikon or Canon, packing a camera for a holiday usually means packing a laptop and a card reader too, then spending the evenings in a hotel room importing RAW files and nudging sliders in Lightroom.

With the X-E5, I shoot SOOC JPEG only.

Fujifilm's color science and film simulation engine let you dial in custom recipes that bake your look into the file the instant you press the shutter:

• In Catania, I loaded Osan Bilgi's Summer Chrome recipe and got warm, sun-baked gold on the Baroque facades without touching a computer once.
• Along the Sicilian coast, I rotated through my top three Mediterranean recipes for punchy blues and nostalgic Kodak greens.
• In Cappadocia's dusty rock valleys, I switched to Grain Noir for high-contrast monochrome on the street and the architecture.

At the end of a long travel day, I send my favorite frames to my phone in two minutes over dinner. To post them, I drop them into Whiteborder Lab for a clean border, or read the palette with Grading Lab. For something physical, I print them on a portable Canon Selphy CP1500 or turn them into an 8-page travel zine with FotoZine Lab.

Your holiday stays a holiday, instead of an unpaid post-production shift.

Stills and video in a single project

Few trips stay stills-only. Even if you think of yourself as a photographer, at some point you want the noise of a market or the sound of waves on the rocks.

The X-E5 shoots 4K with the same film simulations. As I detailed in my hybrid Fujifilm + DaVinci Resolve workflow, I keep one custom dial slot for video (Classic Cinema). Going from 40MP stills to cinematic video is one flip of the top dial.

And since Blackmagic Design released DaVinci Resolve 21.1, Fujifilm RAW files are natively supported on Resolve's dedicated Photo page. If you do shoot RAW on a landmark trip, you can grade the stills and the timeline footage in one application, on the same node trees.

My minimalist travel kit

If you are planning a trip and want to travel light, this is the exact setup that carried me across Sicily, Turkey and Portugal:

• Camera body: Fujifilm X-E5, with IBIS for handheld night shots.
• Main lens: Fujifilm XF 23mm f/2.8 R WR pancake, a 35mm equivalent, weather-sealed and razor sharp.
• Low-light lens, in the sling: Fujifilm XF 35mm f/1.4 R, for night dinners and portraits.
• Filter: K&F Concept Black Diffusion 1/4, screwed onto the 23mm and left there all summer to bloom harsh midday highlights.
• Power: two spare NP-W126S batteries, plus a USB-C cable to recharge in-camera from any power bank.
• Strap: Hyperion Camera Straps, in black.

If you are hesitating between bodies, our free Camera Finder tool will tell you whether the X-E5, the X-T50 or an older body like the X-T30 II fits your budget and the way you shoot.

The bottom line

National Geographic's recommendation is going to make the Fujifilm X-E5 even harder to find in stores. But for once, the mainstream spotlight picked the right tool.

The X-E5 is not built to win spec-sheet arguments. It is light enough to stay on your wrist all day, and the picture is finished the moment the shutter closes. On the road, those are the two things that decide whether you come home with photographs.