Valentin Sama from the Spanish Dslrmagazine (Click here for the translation) tested the E-M5 sensor.
He first compared the new E-M5 with the previous m43 Olympus models. In short the noise performance of the E-m5 has indeed been improved but there is no real advantage in terms of revolution over the older 12 Megapixel E-P3 sensor. Valentin says the E-P3 per pixel sharpness is still a bit greater than the one from the 16 Megapixel E-M5 sensor.
Than Valentin made a comparison with two larger sensor APS-C cameras. The Nikon D7000 and Fuji X PRO 1. First he clearly reminds that both cameras are more expensive than the E.M5. The Nikon D7000 costs $1,500 (here at Amazon) and the Fuji X PRo 1 costs $1,700 (here at Amazon). According to Valentin JPEG testing results the E-M5 is on par with the Nikon D7000. And that’s already a surprising result!
The Fuji has a huge advantage because of the lack Anti Aliasing filter. The results are a greater clarity and less noise.

In summary: he says the E-M5 has indeed an improved JPEG quality although we have to see if that is an improvement is more due the new JPEG engine than the new 16 megapixel sensor.

One more thing: E-M5 with 12-50mm kit lens image samples at Robin Wong (Click here).

Rankings: Three different E-M5 kits are still on top of the Amazon US rankings (Click here).

E-M5 preorders (Click on the names of the stores to see the product page):
Black E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Warehouse UK, and Amazon Japan.
Black E-M5 body with 14-42mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto , Digitalrev and J&R.
Black E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland , Digitalrev and Amazon Japan.
Silver E-M5 body with 12-50mm lens at Amazon, Adorama, BHphoto, J&R, Jessops, Amazon UK, Amazon Deutschland and Amazon Japan.

video by Fotomundus.

About time! Thanks to the french website OpenPN (Click here to read the google translation). They found that the sharpness is very good even when shooting at full f/0.95 aperture. The only major issue at that aperture is the high Chromatic Aberration. The bokeh is wonderful (says the reviewer).

My personal judgment after seeing the image sample is that the Lens is damn good already at f/0.95. Of course it’s not perfect but if you seek for perfection at that extreme aperture than you have to spend over 10.000 Euro/Dollars for the [shoplink 29763 ebay]Leica Noctilux[/shoplink]!

Europenas can preorer the lens at [shoplink 29368 ebay]Digitalhandel (Click here)[/shoplink], [shoplink 29367 ebay]Bayern Fotoversand (Click here)[/shoplink] and Fotomundus (Click here).