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DChan wrote:If you buy a new D500 now, I'm quite sure that it comes with the 20 version. It's been like that since some time in 2016. And there was also a HUGE discount on D500 before Christmas last year.

Yes, it always has - the point is that batteries that came with previous cameras, even though they are the same type, won't work properly if they aren't the type 20.  Nikon at least acknowledges that people use batteries from other cameras in their D500 and will replace them.

It was an extremely generous act on the part of Nikon to replace D500 purchasers with (if I remember correctly) as many as 5 of the old Li-ion 01 batteries with brand new Li-ion 20 batteries. Some of mine were quite old and I wouldn't have expected them to replace them.

The sale on a D500 Nikon package at least in the US which included a free Nikon MB-D17 power pack (worth $369) literally just ended a few days ago. Since such sales periodically happen, if you can wait Tim, I would wait till after summer when that sale might return. For me, a power pack seems very useful for the D500 which draws quite a bit more power than your D7200 and the power pack allows you to use the bigger batteries (like the EN-EL18a) and the price of the power pack alone, at least a Nikon one, seems ridiculous (of course there are third party ones for much cheaper).

Thanks for the help guys.

Ricardo, I have not yet decided if I will go with the D500, but it is a good possibility. Regardless, I have to sell some items first before I could afford it. Unfortunately, the same sale was not offered here in Canada. All they did here was reduce the cost from $2699 to $2449, but no inclusion of the battery grip. The price is still $2449 ($1848 USD) here, but no idea how long that is going to last. The MB-D17 grip is an "outrageous" $560!

As far as the grip goes, this time I am going to buy the Vello grip from B&H. No more Nikon grips for me. They are WAY overpriced, and then when you upgrade, it typically does not fit on the new body, and the resale price drops drastically!

Tim, I prefer the XQD cards (2.0) over the SanDisk Extreme PRO UHS-II cards because The XQD cards have faster read and write speeds. I use a Sony card reader that takes both card types with my D 500, Sony MRWE90/BC2. It is a USB 3 card reader.

After a long day of shooting, getting the images transferred to your laptop or other device can take a long time if the cards do not have fast read speeds and if the card reader is not fast too. I have used both card types and at download you can tell that the images from the XQD cards transfer faster than the images from the UHS-II SD cards. XQD offer read speeds up to 440 MB/s and write speeds up to 400 MB/s. Extreme Pro UHS-II SD cards offer read speeds up to 300 MB/s and write speeds up to 260 MB/s.

The D 500 can be set to have one card type back up the other. Or it can be set up to have one take RAW and the other JPEG. If you elect both image types, you have to make sure you set both image types in the menus.

Sandisk Extreme cards are more than fast enough for my needs. While I realize it is not an option with the D500, I would have preferred two SD card slots like the D7200. I will however likely purchase an XQD card, if I do decide to get a D500, only because I will want a card in each slot.

Yep. Bought a D500 a few weeks back and it came with the LiIon20. They had a promotion to get a free grip, so I got that too. I was intrigued (briefly) at the possibility of the EN-EL18 battery, but was dissuaded by the $400-something pricetag of the charger for it. If you already had this because it came with your D4 etc., then probably not an issue. I'll manage with the 2 EN-EL15's for now. The grip came with a holder for a set of AA batteries to use as well; I suppose it could serve in an emergency.

Now I just need to go out and shoot with it!