Then it was DOA before your earlier comment? OP asked not only about a budget Leica, but "Is there a Leica camera with AF that the IQ is still excellent and have the Leica look?"
Nope. The question didn't focus on the "Leica look" and I didn't focus on it in my response either.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that Leica designs and sells with their name on it has some variation on what is called "the Leica look." The X2, X, X Vario, and Q all seem to have
a Leica look, if perhaps not the same Leica look that a 1972 Summilux 35 v2 designed by Walter Mandler or a 2009 Summicron-M 50 APO designed by Peter Karbe have. My plastic-pig-**** Leica Minizoom had a lovely Leica look. And then there's the T system, with its excellent Leica lenses. Each and every one of my different M and R Leica lenses, particularly when used on a Leica digital body or on film, have a Leica look too..
That's why focusing the discussion on "the Leica look" and then asserting "A 'Leica look' comes mainly from M/R/S/SL lenses" is foolhardy: there's no single such thing. Yet Leica produces all of them.
In the end, the OP wanted to know which of the less costly Leica cameras he might enjoy. I stand by my response: the X, X Vario, and Q all produce lovely photos that carry the characteristics of Leica imaging notions well. The X in particular (because I own and use it, often) produces images that bear very strong resemblance to the SL with its Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-90 @ 35mm setting, or the Summicron-R 35mm.
The sensor may not be the major contributor to this pervasively recognizable Leica look, but the in-camera JPEG rendering engine and raw data handling certainly are, as are as the characteristics of the Leica lenses.
G
