When I read in the reviews here that the small X20 no SLR can replace, then I wonder whether people really think about what you write, because of course they can not do that, and they do not want it also.
In this sense, I would have to then be offended that my Nikon D800 can replace me never my Dp-Merrill (or vice versa), etc., etc.
So we come to the point, and that is: of course Fuji can always build a small camera with DSLR-like picture quality. This has indeed been made Fuji Fuji X100 + Fuji X100s.
And now for Sony. I agree with Ken Rockwell to absolute. What is throwing on the market only seen by technical values her interesting, so something for pixel counter. I had bought time in high spirits, the NEX-7, because that was indeed announced as the great marvel. Even with the Zeiss 24mm 1.8 brought the image quality is not nearly concluded as a Sigma DP1 Merrill and since we are the most important point:
Visual aesthetics, coupled with innovation
Sure, my a large full-frame sensor in the D800 with a 2000 Euro-lens, which already adds something like aesthetic existence and yet my little Merrill are dear to me and I had the D800 with all the glass already abolished if it would fix Sigma times and a fixed AF would build in these cameras.
So while Sony, Nikon, Canon and all 'still propagate the other the hundred-year-old Bayer filter, Fuji and Sigma have made the only ones on the road and built new. The amazing results. By contrast, Sony builds beautifully further cameras with thousands of features, insane automations and forgets the real photographer. The do not need these gimmicks. Megapixel madness to light, so to speak.
Let's take the aperture of RX100: 1.8-4.9, yes because it needs a larger sensors, because it is just dark earlier.
With the X20 I have the Isozahl far turn to 1600, because the RX100 is already in long focal area in 1600. And what about noise? It is completely normal that noise images. This Glatt would iron which then removes the noise, which I can do without, and strange, because slowly seems to grasp that and build the low-pass filter of the cameras out, although you might have to figure out expected later Moire effects with the software ..: - )
And now for the most important (if you like photographed in color). The colors, which capture the Fiji to the paper, are the colors that I want to see in a photograph, they are the expression of a visual aesthetic.
I took me a memory card, am for M-market and have the Sony RX tried. At home, I have looked at that. Everything was clean, everything was okay, but I would never trade my X20 for an RX100. The RX100 is a pseudo-camera, a pretty toy, which is a full-fledged camera X20.
But if you want to have a better, small camera than the X20 and can do without the zoom, then you should buy the FUJI X100s. Something better peripherally there are currently not, at least as long as not to Fuji's going into full frame.
And here again the points that speak for the Fuji X20:
1) real camera
2.) with powerful lens over the entire focal length
3.) All the controls easy to operate
4.) aesthetics of colors
3.) Viewfinder
4.) beauty and value
5.) haptics
6.) faster AF
7) Focus Peaking
8) well manually (for Street Photos)
9) favorable price