Hands On With The Sony RX100 VII

Sony introduced earlier today the 7’th generation of its popular 1″ sensor compact camera the RX100. On this version, Sony included some of the advanced AF features of the A9 as well as a number of smaller but no less important improvements.

Another day another upgraded Sony camera and this time it is the RX100’s 7’th iteration which brings some interesting features mostly around the AF capabilities and viewfinder which take a note from the A9.

Here are some of the new features compared to the existing RX100 VI:

New 1″ stacked 20.1 MP Exmor RS CMOS sensor with DRAM chip and latest-generation BIONZ X image processor.
Alpha 9 level speed with 20fps blackout-free shooting with AF/AE tracking.
357-point phase-detect AF points + 425-point contrast-detection AF (and super-fast 0.02-sec focus acquisition speed).
Real-time Tracking and Real-time Eye AF for humans and animals (including eye AF in video).
4K HDR (HLG).
4K Active SteadyShot (said to be up to 8x more effective than 4K Standard SteadyShot).
Battery life:Up to 330 shots / 165 minutes (slight improvment here).
Vertical-position data recording for movies (using a gyroscope) as well as 1:1 aspect ratio shooting (great for Instagram).
Industry-standard 3.5mm microphone input.

Other features which did not change include:

ZEISS^® Vario-Sonnar T* 24-200mm F2.8 – F4.5 lens.
180-degree flip screen.
UHD 4K video at 30/24 fps (up to 5 min per file).
One-push pop-up XGA OLED electronic viewfinder offers a resolution of 2.36m dots and 0.59x magnification.
Step Zoom lets you quickly change between five common focal lengths (24, 28, 35, 50, or 70mm) by rotating the control ring.
WIFI/BT/NFC.

As for pricing, the new camera will cost just as much as the RX100 VI when it was announced or $1200 – making it one of the most expensive compact cameras on the market (certainly in the 1″ category).

Our friend and colleague from Cinema 5D with a hands-on with the new RX100 VII

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Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.