Both Canon M3 and Sony A6000 have 24.0 MP resolution sensors but Canon M3's sensor is APS-C (22.3 x 14.9 mm ) and Sony A6000's sensor is APS-C (23.5 x 15.6 mm ).
Since Sony A6000's has a larger sensor area with the same resolution, this means that it also has a larger pixel area hence better light collecting capacity for a given aperture compared to Canon M3.
Below you can see the M3 and A6000 sensor size comparison.
As seen above, Sony A6000 has a 1.1x Larger sensor area than Canon M3. Larger sensors give photographer more control on the depth of field and blurry background compared to smaller sensor when shot in same focal length and aperture.
DxOMark Sensor Scores
DxOMark is a benchmark that scientifically assesses image quality of camera sensors. It scores camera sensors for color depth (DXO Portrait), dynamic range (DXO Landscape) and low-light sensitivity (DXO Sports), and also gives them an overall score. Canon M3 and Sony A6000 sensors have been tested by DxO and the results show that A6000 has a better overall score of 82, 10 points higher compared to M3's score of 72.
Model |
Overall |
Color Depth |
Dynamic Range |
Low-light ISO |
Canon M3 |
72 |
22.8 bits |
11.8 Evs |
1169 ISO |
Sony A6000 |
82 |
24.1 bits |
13.1 Evs |
1347 ISO |