The Sony A7R VI is a substantial upgrade over the Sony A7R V in performance and video capabilities, though not necessarily in resolution. It’s another Sony powerhouse that has everything and does everything at blistering speed. Is it the best Sony yet? That’s where it gets complicated.
The resolution increase from 61MP to 66.8MP isn’t big in itself, but it’s an indication of a whole new sensor design. Indeed, this one is described as ‘fully stacked’, in order perhaps to differentiate it from cameras like the Nikon 6 III and its ‘partially stacked’ sensor.
Sony claims the A7R VI sensor has a readout speed 5.6x faster than the Sony A7 V, and when you combine this with the new camera’s 30fps blackout-free shooting with AE/AF, 8K 30p video, 4K 60p and 4k 120p cropped, you have a camera that isn’t just a resolution specialist but a powerful jack-of-all-trades that can handle everything from sports to events to portraits and weddings, landscapes and even cinematic video.
The Sony A7R VI does look like an amazing technical achievement, and it’s easy to see how pro photographers might be tempted by all these capabilities – resolution, speed, video – rolled into a single body. These technical advances come at a price, of course, and at around $4,500/£4,400 at launch, the A7R VI is not surprisingly more expensive than the outgoing A7 V.
Which Sony is best now?
So where does this leave the Sony A1 II, which is also a high-resolution, blisteringly fast do-it-all camera? The A1 II still holds quite a few cards when you get down into the nitty gritty details, and all is maybe not quite as it seems with the A7R VI’s ‘fully stacked’ sensor. DP Review reports that the new sensor design stacking includes a processing layer rather than the speed-focused DRAM buffering memory in previous Sony stacked sensors, with the suggestion that the new sensor is designed as much for dynamic range enhancement as much as speed.
It seems we’ll have to get used to the idea that ‘stacked’ sensors are not all the same, and not necessarily a guarantee of high-speed readout in the way we imagined. The Sony A1 II is still, it seems, the faster camera.
But let’s not forget. the Sony A7 III and its global shutter. If sports and action are your thing, then this camera leaves both the A7R VI and A1 II gasping in its wake.
- Sony A7R VI prices: $4,499 at B&H | £4,399 at Wex
It used to be simple. You chose one camera for its resolution, another for its speed, another for video. It used to be so much easier to figure out what a camera was FOR. Increasingly, it seems, every new Sony camera is brilliant at everything.
For the record, I have nothing against Sony. My full frame camera system is Sony. I just wish Sony’s product development and marketing had a little more direction, a little more context.
In particular, you would have to dig quite deep, with a degree of technical understanding, to see why you might choose the Sony A7R VI over the A1 II and vice versa. Both are presented as extraordinarily powerful cameras that can do almost anything in ways we’ve never seen before, and both are presented without any reference to the other.
It’s almost as if every Sony camera launch pretends there aren’t actually any other Sony cameras.