Let's be honest: this is not a lens you'd consider buying because of its outstanding optical performance. Standard zoom lenses are often a challenge to engineer, because they need to combine partially contradicting design goals into a single product. As a result, they are typically full of compromises, which from an end-user's perspective means they come with what is often perceived as restrictions, limitations, issues or even flaws. The Fujinon XF 16-80mm f/4 R OIS WR certainly comes with a few compromises of that kind.

Let's start with the good news: the build quality of the lens is high, despite its extending monocam design and some plastic parts it feels solid and sturdy. The stepping motor provides fast and silent autofocus and the latest generation OIS is impressive. On top, the lens features sealing agains dust and moisture, so should be a reliable travel companion for most environments. Except for the focus, zoom and aperture rings there are no controls on the lens body. Focus mode and OIS can and need to be set via the camera, but a dedicated OIS switch on the lens would come handy occasionally.

With very good to excellent resolution, sharpness is not an issue in the image center. But depending on the focal length, it can be at the image borders and corners. The fact that Fujifilm relies on correcting heavy distortion and vignetting by software instead of optical engineering doesn't help in this regard, which is especially shown by the border resolution at 16mm. At 80mm, the border and especially corner resolution is so low that it feels like Fujifilm maybe stretched the zoom range of the lens a tad too far.

On a more positive note, the bokeh quality is not outstanding, but certainly above average for a standard zoom.

So, if you're in the market for a new standard zoom, the question you need to answer yourself is not "is it stellar?". Because, quite obviously, it's not. But there is currently no other lens for X-mount that combines this particular zoom range with the same feature set and build quailty. So, if the lens specs match your wish list on paper, the actual question is: "will it, with all its compromises, still be good enough for what I want to use it for?". There are too many individual use cases to give a clear answer to that, but if in doubt, the facts published in this and other reviews hopefully can give some guidance in making that decision.