>>4122551>commercial-tier niche brandFor the state of the market in 2023, yes, and it should be obvious to anyone who does even a cursory comparison.
For a while there, though, from 2010-2016 (from the K-5 release to K-1 release), it seemed like the brand might have some potential as a viable alternative system, a niche that Fujifilm has effectively filled today. The K-5 came out when $2000 was the bar to entry to the full frame world, when people were still using large, film era lenses with their APS-C DSLRs, and when effective weather-sealing was out of reach of the ordinary hobbyist. The K-5 offered affordable weather-sealing (body and some lenses), better ISO invariance than Canon (competitive with Nikon), and offered shake reduction (i.e., IBIS) at an affordable price that could work with film era lenses that longtime Pentax users were likely to already have. In 2010 and for several years thereafter, Pentax was one of the least expensive ways to access these pro-level features. Plus, there were some neat bonuses you couldn't get in other systems, like the ultra compact DA Limiteds.
What they didn't plan for was the fact that older Canikon full frame, and later Sony, bodies and lenses eventually became extremely affordable on the secondhand market, so by the time the K-1 came out, it was in no way appealing to any consumer or pro photographer. It was solely a product intended for existing Pentax users, many of whom had, by then, become so fed up with waiting for Pentax FF that most had probably already changed systems anyway.
Anyone seriously looking at Pentax in 2023 is either wearing nostalgia goggles, or is badly confused.
