Sony α6000 Camera Review

The Sony a6000 is very portable. Its body has a low-profile design, and it's very lightweight, making it easy to throw into a bag or take on the go. It's even more compact than newer models in the lineup like the Sony a6100, especially the higher-end Sony α6600.

The Sony a6000 has a good build quality, similar to the Sony a6100, though its plastic construction feels cheaper than the magnesium alloy body of the Sony a6400. The inputs and battery compartment are covered by sturdy hinged doors. The buttons also provide nice physical feedback. However, some of the inputs, like the aperture dial, aren't the most responsive, with a slight delay when you change an input.

The Sony a6000 has just a single dial on top, which controls aperture by default, and a control wheel on the back, which controls shutter speed and also acts as a directional pad to navigate the menu.

• Sony a6000 camera body
• Sony E 16-50mm 3.5-5.6/PZ OSS lens
• Lens caps
• Sensor cap
• Viewfinder eyecup
• 1x NP-FW50 battery
• Shoulder strap
• AC adapter
• Micro-USB to USB-A cable
• User manual

The Sony a6000 feels comfortable to shoot with for people of most hand sizes, except for those with larger hands, which can feel cramped on the camera's relatively small handgrip and body. The video record button is also strangely placed by the thumb rest, making it a little awkward to start recording in movie mode. Still, the camera feels lightweight and well-balanced. It's also easy to adjust settings with either eye to the viewfinder, though the offset EVF is better suited to right-eye shooters.

The EVF is decently sized and fairly comfortable to shoot through. However, its resolution falls short of newer models like the Sony a6400, meaning the image doesn't look as crisp. Thankfully, it doesn't exhibit too much lag.

The Sony a6000 has a tilting screen, which is great for waist-level shooting since it's discreet and easy to pop out. The screen is bright enough to see clearly in sunnier conditions, but it lacks touch capability, making it more cumbersome to navigate the menu and change settings. The lack of touch capability also means there's no option to use touch focus, as on newer models, so you're stuck with using the control wheel to manually select focus points.

The Sony a6000 uses Sony's older menu system, which is notoriously confusing and difficult to navigate. More advanced settings are buried within submenus that aren't all logically organized. However, you can set it to tile view, which makes it a little quicker to get to the right section of the menu. Thankfully, it has a lot of customization options, allowing you to configure the buttons and a custom menu to your preference, so you don't have to dive into the labyrinthine menu as frequently.

The Sony a6000 has an okay battery life. Depending on how you use it, you can get a fair amount of shots out of it on a full charge, though it still pales in comparison to most DSLR cameras. Battery life is good for video, but mostly because the camera's limited to 1080p recording, which doesn't drain the battery as fast as more demanding 4k video.

While the Sony a6000 doesn't have electronic shutter capability for silent shooting, it does have an electronic front-curtain shutter (EFCS) option to reduce shutter shock at slower shutter speeds. However, you have to delve into the 'Custom Settings' menu to enable it.

The Sony a6000 has an alright shooting speed. It shoots at a fairly quick continuous shooting speed in its high-speed drive mode, which is good for capturing stills of fast-moving subjects. In addition to 'Low' and 'High', there's also a 'Mid' drive mode that can shoot at 6 fps. Unfortunately, the camera has a relatively small photo buffer, especially if you shoot in RAW format. The buffer also takes a fair amount of time to empty once full. Though it isn't the worst, it's slow enough that you could miss a key moment waiting for it to finish clearing.

The Sony a6000 has a decent autofocus system. It was an impressive AF system at the time of its release in 2014, but it falls short when compared to newer cameras. Like other Sony Alpha models, it uses a hybrid on-sensor AF system with both phase-detection and contrast-detection AF, although it has fewer focus points than newer models.

Overall, it does a great job tracking moving faces, and it includes an eye-detection feature for more precise focus. It isn't as fast or sticky as newer models like the Sony a6400, meaning faster-moving subjects likely won't be in focus in every shot, but it still has a solid hit rate. The general subject/object tracking can be a bit slow to find its target. Still, for general purpose and casual photography, it's likely to keep up fairly well in a wide range of shooting situations.

The Sony a6000 doesn't have in-body image stabilization, but you can use an optically stabilized lens to help reduce camera shake and shoot handheld at slower shutter speeds. The Sony E 16-50mm 3.5-5.6/PZ OSS kit lens that we tested the camera with includes 'Optical SteadyShot', Sony's name for stabilization, and it does a decent job of stabilizing the camera for photos. However, you'll still need a tripod when shooting at 1/20s or slower.

The Sony a6000 has good dynamic range. While it isn't as impressive as newer, higher-end models like the Sony a6600, especially at higher ISO settings, it still captures a fairly wide range of detail in high-contrast scenes like our skate park sample gallery photo, which you can download here. You do lose some shadow detail, but highlights are preserved quite well. That said, the camera doesn't have the best noise handling, and pushing the exposure of your RAW files too much results in noticeable noise and banding. Overall, that means you can take photos of high-contrast scenes with a fair amount of detail preservation, but you don't have as much leeway when making exposure adjustments as you might with a newer camera.

The Sony a6000 is capable of taking very sharp JPEGs when paired with a high-end lens like the Zeiss Milvus 50mm f/1.4 lens that we use to test image quality. You can punch in on your photos and still get pretty clean edges, especially with photos taken at base ISO. If you stick with the 16-50mm kit lens, expect photos that don't look quite as sharp, particularly around the edges of the frame, and have more chromatic aberrations, as you can see in some of our sample gallery images.

The Sony a6000 has excellent noise processing for JPEGs. Photos don't hold up as well at higher ISOs as they do on newer models like the Sony a6400, but images taken up to around ISO 800 look pretty good. Anything higher, and you start to see more noticeable noise and muddier details.

RAW noise handling is just okay. It performs well at low ISO values, but noise begins to creep in as you raise the ISO, and it doesn't handle noise as well at higher ISOs than newer models do, meaning images taken in low light don't look as clean. If you want a mirrorless camera with better RAW noise handling, check out the Fujifilm X-T30 II.

The Sony a6000 has a fair amount of frame rate options, including 60 fps for smooth action recording or generating standard slow-motion footage.

Internal recording capability on the Sony a6000 is good. Bit rates are more limited than newer Alpha models, so the camera can't capture as much raw information, but smaller bit rates result in files that are easier to transfer.

The Sony a6000 has a decent autofocus system for video. It has a face detection feature, but no eye tracking. It does a good job with tracking human subjects, especially with slower movements, but it's not as "sticky" as the AF on newer Sony cameras, meaning there's occasionally a slight delay for the AF to catch up to your subject after they've moved or popped back into frame. Same goes for the general subject/object tracking, which can be slow to find its target after it's moved.

The Sony a6000 records decent-quality video. It isn't the sharpest or most detailed 1080p, but it's suitable for more casual recording. Unfortunately, it struggles a bit more in low light, where video looks grainy and muddy. You also lose a lot of detail in the shadows.

The Sony a6000 has some noticeable rolling shutter effect when panning the camera from side to side, but it isn't too distracting when the camera's moving at a slower pace.

The Sony a6000 has just a single SD card slot, rated for slower UHS-I cards, meaning you can't take advantage of the faster read and write speeds of newer UHS-II cards.

The Sony a6000 has a few inputs and outputs, including a Micro USB port and a Micro HDMI port, but it doesn't have a headphone jack or a microphone input, which is unfortunate if you want to record higher-quality audio. It's an older camera, so it doesn't support Bluetooth, but you can still transfer files over Wi-Fi if you prefer wireless connectivity.