Sony A1 Hands-on Review Part II: Has Sony made the perfect camera?
posted Monday, November 1, 2021 at 5:00 PM EDT
Click here to read our Sony A1 Hands-on Review Part II
The Sony A1 launched earlier this year to much acclaim. The full-frame mirrorless camera sits atop Sony's Alpha series with flagship features and performance across the board. The Sony A1 includes a stacked 50.1-megapixel image sensor and can shoot full-size RAW images at up to 30 frames per second, which is incredibly fast. While the Canon EOS R3 has since promised similar speeds, it does so at a much lower megapixel count of 24. The Nikon Z9 packs almost as many pixels onto its newly-developed stacked sensor, 45.7MP, but shoots RAW images at 'only' 20 frames per second. The Sony A1 is a beast, so we wanted to spend more time with the camera for a second Hands-on Review.
When I first picked up the Sony A1, the camera's excellent design and ergonomics immediately stood out. The camera has an ample front grip and many customizable buttons. It's simple to get the camera set up precisely to your preferences. You can also save customizable buttons separately for stills and video. In use, the A1's new electronic viewfinder is excellent. It's a large OLED panel with approximately 9.44M dots and a 0.9x magnification factor. It's large, sharp and smooth. It's one of the best EVFs out there, if not the best.
The A1's 50.1-megapixel image sensor produces excellent image quality. While optimal sharpness and dynamic range can't quite match the A7R IV, the A1 offers plenty of megapixels and imaging performance for nearly any situation. There are plenty of cameras with high-megapixel sensors, so what makes the A1 stand out is that it can shoot full-size RAW images at up to 30 frames per second. As I describe in my review, there are caveats to this spec, but the A1 is nonetheless a very impressive camera. It's up to the task of any situation and is a true flagship camera.
Autofocus is key, too, and the A1's autofocus performance is excellent. The camera focuses quickly and accurately across its different autofocus area modes and in challenging situations. Sony's 'Real-time Tracking' autofocus is excellent, and the A1 makes capturing sharp, in-focus images very straightforward.
There's much more to discuss about the Sony A1, including the camera's impressive video performance. The Sony A1 does it all, and it does it all very well. In our review, we also dig further into the A1's performance across the board and discuss the ideal target audience for the A1. Although we've yet to go hands-on with the upcoming Canon EOS R3 and Nikon Z9 cameras, they're the toughest competition for the Sony A1, so we also discuss how those new cameras look to compare to the A1 across key performance sectors.
If you have yet to read our first Hands-on Review for the Sony A1, click here. To jump straight to the new review, click here.