Mirrorless camera with picture quality about the same as a Nikon D3300?

I was looking at buying a good camera an I found the Nikon D3300, it has very positive reviews, good features like no AA-filter, 24 MP sensor, light and overall a good camera. Now, I was wondering how the Nikon would compare to a mirrorless with similar image quality and features, and price. Is it a good idea to buy the D3300 for beginner or buy a mirrorless with similar price?

What is your maximum price? Personaly I would prefere Canon above Nikon. Something similar: http://www.kamera-express.nl/product/12175974/canon-eos-600d-tamron-18-270mm-vc-/.

But it's really personal. The D3300 is also a great camera.

You could match it with a Sony A6000 but it isn't as robustly-built.
However the mirrorless camera is nearly 50% lighter and when you add lenses they'll be smaller and lighter than the DSLR ones too. You also get a LCD panel that flips (not completely articulating like on the Nikon D5300). You will pay about 25% more for the mirrorless camera.
Battery life of mirrorless cameras is not as good though.

Why would you want mirrorless? Except maybe a Nikon 1 J5…

My silliness aside, the Nikon D3300 is a fine camera. But, if you are a beginner why not pick up it's cheaper, 90+% as good, predecessor (D3200) and work with that for the near future. The money you save could go towards a better lense or a lighting solution that helps when you don't have an abundance of good natural light (which enables almost *any* camera to take nice pictures).

Then, if you become a "Serious Amateur" you can think about major upgrades.

I don't like EVIL cameras, I'll admit, but it's only fair to point out that the D3300's sparkling performance is due in no small measure to its Sony sensor, shared with the A6000 EVIL, SLT A-58, and a far better DSLR, the Pentax K-50 (think D7100 performance at D3300 price).

If you can put up with the size and weight, a DSLR is definitely the way to go for serious photography, but look at All the alternatives first.

If you want an EVIL model, Sony, Olympus and Panasonic, are the only ones worth considering (Nikon are held back by a small sensor, Canon are still trying to produce a worthwhile model, Samsung are a joke, and Pentax should hang their heads over the Q-series).

The biggest difference is going to be the size of the camera. Image wise there's not a huge difference in regards to sensor quality. The Sony cameras are of good quality but the difference is the lens selection is greater on the Nikon products.

I'm big fan of mirrorless but I shoot with Panasonic and Olympus. These have smaller sensors then the D3300 but are still great camera. I have found though that compared to my Canon T3i DSLR my Olympus EM-5 is a better camera image wise. I should point out that it is very common for pros to shoot with a DSLR and pick a camera like an Olympus for their recreational shooting. There are also many pros who shoot with Olympus Micro 4/3 camera as their primary. Ultimately the quality you get is more skill dependent then technical so you can get great results with a lot of different camera choices. If you already have a good camera use it and learn with it.

You will get the same image quality whether you use a mirrorless camera or a dSLR whether or not you know what you are doing. For a beginner, if not that serious into photography, the best camera is a bridge. It's cheaper, far much easier to use and has ridiculously lots of zoom which shy beginners love.

With mirrorless, you gain a compact design, but at the expense of a poor autofocusing system that can't focus well on moving objects. I'm not talking about fast NASCAR situations, but just an average person walking towards the camera. Even in these types of situations, the AF in mirrorless cameras can't keep up with the movement.

You can certainly get as good if not better images out of a mirrorless as you can with a DSLR. This is because the image quality is not in the body, it's in the lens. Put a great lens on a cheap mirrorless and cheap lens on an expensive full-frame camera, and the image quality of the mirrorless will be better.

Think of it this way, you buy the body for the features that you need in order to have the control that you need to express your vision. You buy the lens for the sharpness and image quality along with the field of view and aperture size for your needs.