Looking at the review the reviewer has started from the standpoint that higher zooming capabilities are "absurd", also so some (to me) childish comments about the "whalelike shape" of the SX40 rather than getting down to looking at the SX50 in the context of what it can do and relating that to real users needs. I for one are not concerned about how good looking or sleek a camera is (they are purely personal things), what I am concerned about is how good looking the photos it takes are and how the camera handles and how easy it is to get good pictures.
To me the main weakness of the SX40 are that it is difficult to adjust the setting manually and the SX50 has not addressed that issue .. but others here have no problem with those issues. To me if the camera roughly matches the SX40 up to 35x then the ability to go to 50x optically is a bonus. RAW does not matter to me but to some it does matter so I do not begrudge that to those to whom it does matter.
A quick look at Amateur Photographer yesterday, showed that AP gave the camera 81% as against DP reviews 72%. I am not a really a fan of Canon but I would give the SX40 90% and I am tempted to think that I would give the SX50 the same.
As regards the Panasonic, back in 2010 24x zoom was amazing, I had a FZ45 and was very impressed with its performance and pictures, however things have moved on and 24x is no longer impressive but Panasonic seem to be stuck in a rut, they have done two updates to the FZ100 offering what are to most users basically the same performance and nothing to my mind real to choose between them because the differences are simply "tweekings". In the same period Canon have offered the SX30, SX40 and SX50 and each camera has offered real incremental and practical gains over the previous model, and gains that almost any user can actually perceive.