Four years after the A7 IV came out, Sony's given its mid-range flagship a glowup – making it a more versatile option that'll better serve your photo and video shooting needs around the US$3,000 mark.
There are a lot of new meaningful improvements under the hood, from the sensor to the processor. You'll also find some quality-of-life upgrades for an easier time out in the field. Most of them are really about speed, including faster focusing and quicker readouts for better performance.
Let's talk about those internals first. The A7 V gets a new 33-megapixel partially stacked image sensor, which makes for significantly faster rolling shutter (down to 15 ms compared to the ~70 ms on the A7 IV with its unstacked sensor), along with less distortion when you're tracking fast-moving objects. It manages 16 stops of dynamic range, and offers three new modes: Pixel Shift Multi Shooting for higher resolution images of still subjects up to 199 megapixels, Noise Reduction shooting, and HDR composite RAW shooting.
This sensor allows for 33-megapixel shots at up to an incredible 30 frames per second (fps) – a step up from the A7 IV's 10 fps for folks looking for better performance shooting sports and wildlife.
There's a new Bionz XR2 processor at work too, which boasts integrated AI processing, rather than relying on a separate AI chip. Sony says this improves white balance detection and significantly faster autofocus (the fastest ever from Sony); the latter also recognizes a wider variety of animals and is more accurate overall. And with this processor's greater efficiency and internal architecture for heat dissipation, you can expect about 20% better battery life on this model. That works out to 630 shots using the EVF (compared to 520 shots from its predecessor), and 750 with the LCD (up from 580).
On the photography front, the full-frame A7 V manages 30 fps shooting in electronic shutter mode; the memory buffer lets you shoot a whopping 94 compressed RAW shots in a row. There's also a neat pre-capture feature which will snap images when you just half-press the shutter button to focus, and that can come in handy for action stuff. There's that new AI-powered white balance and real-time recognition autofocus we talked about, and Sony is also confident it'll work well in low light conditions.
For videographers, there's 4K 120 fps support with an APS-C crop, as well as 4K 60 fps full width shooting. With a nearly 3x quicker readout from the new internals, you can expect less of that annoying rolling shutter effect. The A7 V can also do 7K oversampled 4K 60p recording, but that's with a reduced angle of view. While the hardware seems like it should be up to the task, this one doesn't record in full 7K resolution.
Beyond that, you can look forward to a new Dynamic Active Steadyshot mode that promises pretty decent stabilization, but it'll crop into your frame a fair bit. The A7 V is generally good for two hours of recording on a full battery. And as with many other models in this segment, you've got room for two memory cards.
Other improvements include the addition of a second USB-C port, so you can use one for power delivery and the other for quick data transfer. There's also a higher resolution back panel display, with flexible articulation and automatic dimming to save you a bit of battery when it's bright out. Wi-Fi on this model is faster too, so you can beam photos and video without plugging anything in.
With that, Sony's got quite the contender in this mid-range segment to go up against the Nikon Z6 III and Canon EOS R6 Mark III. It's now available to pre-order from B&H at $2,898 for just the body; $3,098 will net you the body and a 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. Deliveries begin on December 18.
Product page: Sony A7 V
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