I have been a photographer for 6 years now and I started with a Canon T3i and kit lens combo. I loved it and spent most of my spare time learning all I could.My next purchase was the “ nifty fifty “ naturally because every review I read said it was a must have. I liked it and it taught me about depth of field and I learned that I love a razor thin , shallow dof! I bought the Canon 24mm pancake lens and it became my favorite lens. Still is. My T3i has been having issues so I decided to upgrade. I’m on a limited income so I can only do so much financially. I also know that the best investment you can make , is in the lenses you buy. A great lens and knowledge will take you a long way in the kind of images your camera takes. I read tons of reviews and decided to buy The T7i. I was torn between it and the 77D because of the top LCD screen. They seemed almost identical in almost every other way but when I compared images on several photo sites, the T7i seemed to be the better of the two. It was also advertised as being smaller than the 77D. That appealed to me. I received it a few days ago, along with the new STM version of the 50mm instead of the kit lens. I’ve only used it a few times inside and in my front yard, planning on really testing it out this coming weekend. I noticed the usual Canon color science seemed to be ... different. Washed out but I chalked it up to being a different processor and just not used to the settings. It was also the same size and only slightly lighter in weight than my T3i. The 50mm 1.8 was also not as good as I had hoped. I put my kit lens from my T3i on the camera and immediately got sharper images. To be honest, I was disappointed. The DIGIC 7 processor seemed worse than the DIGIC 4! The colors are much brighter and sharper in my T3i! Skin tones are more realistic. I tried all the in camera settings. Standard, Fine, Neutral, etc. and tried different exposures and white balance settings. I still wasn’t ready to give up.... until today. 3 days after receiving my poorly packaged camera and lens. It came in a box without any type of padding at all. No paper, nothing at all just sliding around in the box. I was again, reading the manual and trying out different settings and the camera just froze. The LCD screen wouldn’t work. The buttons wouldn’t work. I couldn’t even turn it off. I had to remove the battery and put it back in to get it to turn off! That was enough for me. I immediately arranged for a return label for both items. I’m sure I got a lemon but I don’t think I would have been happy with this “ upgrade” anyway. Canon seems to be putting out the same product with small upgrades every other year. The T6 is nothing but the T3i with WiFi. For $300 I could have had the same thing, since I don’t usually shoot a bunch of fast moving objects. However, I have been able to shoot many many birds using just 9 focus points , with single focus points. I can’t recommend the T7i but I also can’t NOT recommend it. For a beginner, but a T6 and get a great set of lenses. That way, when you are ready to upgrade, you won’t need new lenses. I also highly recommend the Canon 24mm f2.8 pancake lens. You won’t regret it. It’s also only about $130 U.S. which is perfect for such a remarkable lens. I know this review is long but I hope it helps someone. The auto focus on the T7i was fast and accurate especially when using live view. The touch focus in live view mode was great but I missed the touch and drag feature the Canon M50 and some other mirrorless camera’s have. I do wish the camera didn’t have the “ freeze “ issue because I would have liked to see if I could conquer the IQ issues but maybe it was a sign of things to come.