Personally I think an SLR would be a huge pain when hiking etc. I'd be looking more around the lines of the Sony RX100 series.

I would for sure, it's just a great all around camera. I went from an 550D and a bag full of glass to an RX100 Mk3. Mostly due to the weight and the old fact of the best camera you have is the one you have on you, which was never the 550D as it as too heavy, by the time I had all the glass etc. No such issues with the RX100.

Remember to get a decent case. 

BlinkyBill: Remember to support your local camera store.

Which is an admirable sentiment and one I agree with in principle...though money talks and when you can frequently buy much cheaper online, it can be hard to justify!

That said, Auckland Camera seem to be doing a number of rolling deals at the moment which do bring prices into competitiveness. X-T2 body only is $300 off currently which is a great deal and easily matches what you could import for.

Am sure RX100 in whatever variant is very good but personally I would, and did, go for an A6000 plus 16-50 and 55-210 lenses. At the time it was a good price but think they've gone up quite a bit now. 16-50 lens isn't considered the best but does I think count as quite reasonable and good value for money. Combo also quite compact if you've got big pockets, not in RX100 league though. Also not weather proof, like RX100 I think, though depressingly few are.

A6300/A6500 are more impressive, but so are their prices.

If you're not actually into changing / trying out different lenses, then maybe back to RX100 ?

lxsw20:

 

Personally I think an SLR would be a huge pain when hiking etc. I'd be looking more around the lines of the Sony RX100 series.

 

I don't find DSLRs a pain while hiking. The tripod is more my issue.

My personal preference is DSLR but by no means is mirrorless a bad way to go. You'll possibly get sharper images and better contrast with something like a Sony a6300 over the Sony RX100. That said if you don't want interchangeable lenses the RX100 would be a good option.

Put another way, just to balance both sides.  Whilst a DSLR / or Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens Camera will likely have a technically more capable sensor, it is equally important to have quality glass funnelling the light onto that sensor.  If you're going to buy an interchangeable lens camera, but don't have enough money to buy lenses (often equal to or more than the cost of the body alone) then you're potentially no better off than buying an all in one, with a good sensor and a good quality lens matched to the package.

If you want to cover all the areas that a quality compact with a zoom, you're often talking a kit lens, a telephoto lense, something macro capable, something very wide angled and a prime for portraits/very narrow depth of field work.  The more I write here, the more I'm considering downsizing...  

If it's a photography holiday, then I say take your best gear and go make some magic photos.  If it's a holiday and you want some photos from it, then get a quality compact, where you react quickly on the fly and not let it slow you down.

I think I'm in a similar position to the OP. I've been using my partner's Canon 750D for the past year with the stock two lenses. Mainly as I'll put it in my golf bag the odd Saturday and take photos. However given it's size I rarely used it for anything else.

So I bought a Sony RX100 Mk4, mainly from positive reviews of this series on here and online. I've had it for a couple of months now and my thoughts on it are as follows:

It's considerably smaller, so I take it to golf all the time, I've put it in my Camelbak for mountainbiking and generally take it on the road with me for work. However, it's quite awkward to actually hold, not so much when you get used to it, but when you give it to someone else to video my golf swing, it looks like they've been given a hot potato. The menu system is nowhere as intuitive as Canon's. The battery, which many reviews said was poor, has been pretty good for me. I mainly use it for high speed video, so I'm not taking hundreds of shots like others would. I like the NFC, probably common now, but it's quite convenient to bump against my phone to get a JPEG that I can then send elsewhere.  I can't say I've used the 4K, as I've got no devices to view it on.

I think most of these things would be true of any of the compacts, however it was also twice the price of the DSLR, but I get more than double the use from it. As for image quality, I'm a novice, so I won't comment, but it's meant that I'm taking more photos, more often.