Sony ZV-1 Camera Review

The Sony ZV-1 is very portable. It's incredibly lightweight and doesn't take up too much space in a bag. You can even fit it into a coat or hoodie pocket if you need.

The Sony ZV-1 feels decently well-built. It's made of solid-feeling plastic, and it has a slight bump on the front designed to make the camera more comfortable to hold in a vlogging/selfie position. There's also a back thumb grip to help maintain a secure hold. The screen feels fairly sturdy as well. Some of the buttons are really small and can be a little sluggish to respond. The microphone grate on top also attracts dust and needs frequent cleaning.

There's only a single control wheel on the back of the camera that controls ISO, shutter speed, or aperture, depending on the mode you're using. If you're more accustomed to having multiple dials and buttons to change your settings, the single control wheel on the back of the camera can take some getting used to, especially given its placement. Having just one dial also makes it harder to adjust settings when shooting in manual mode.

There are two custom buttons (C1 and C2). By default, the C1 button controls the camera's 'Background Defocus' function, which quickly switches from a deep to shallow depth of field, while the C2 button toggles the 'Product Showcase' feature, which automatically switches focus to objects held up in the frame. You can set custom functions for the 'Fn' button, as well as the center, left, and right buttons on the control wheel.

• Sony ZV-1 camera
• Windscreen for microphone
• 1x Sony Np-BX1 battery
• USB-A to Micro USB cable
• User manual

The Sony ZV-1 has good ergonomics. The buttons are all easily accessible, and there's a Fn button to access the quick menu to adjust your commonly used settings. It has a dedicated video recording button, which is great for quickly starting recording. It's big and easy to press. Because of the camera's compact size, it isn't the most comfortable to use if you have bigger hands. Its screen also has limited touch capability, which is really inconvenient when vlogging or taking selfies since you have to turn the camera back around to adjust settings. The detachable windscreen also gets in the way of the hot shoe and power button when attached.

The Sony ZV-1 has an excellent screen with a good size. The screen mechanism feels solid, and the camera has a nice feature that you can enable/disable in settings that powers the camera on/off by pulling out or closing the screen. It's useful for vloggers who want to power up and go on the fly just by pulling out and turning the screen around to face them. Thankfully, the screen is quite bright, so it can overcome glare in sunny conditions, although it doesn't have the sharpest resolution. Unfortunately, touch capability is limited to selecting focus points, toggling subject tracking, and touch shutter; you can't use it to navigate the menu or change settings.

Unfortunately, the Sony ZV-1 has Sony's convoluted menu system that you can only navigate using the camera's click wheel. More advanced settings are buried within poorly organized submenus, making them hard to find. That said, the camera has a lot of customization options, and once you configure the camera to your liking, you won't need to go deep into the menu too often.

In addition to most of the usual assistance functions for exposure and focus, the Sony ZV-1 also has a manual focus assistant that can magnify the image to let you check if things are properly focused. There's also a graphic display that allows you to preview depth of field before you take a photo. All of the assistance functions are available in both photo and video mode.

The Sony ZV-1 has a built-in neutral density (ND) filter for its lens that effectively reduces the amount of light captured by the camera. This helps shoot at a large aperture or slow shutter speed in a brightly lit environment without over-exposing your image. The ND filter can be engaged and disengaged through the Fn menu.

The Sony ZV-1 has poor overall battery life. Because of its compact size, the battery is necessarily small. It uses the Np-BX1 battery as the Sony RX100 VII, and it's rated for around 260 shots on a full charge, which isn't great, so you'll probably need a spare battery or two for longer shooting days. Otherwise, you can use a portable battery pack since it supports USB charging. For video, it'll last for about 50 minutes of continuous recording in 4k.

Note: There's an 'Auto Power OFF Temp' setting that determines at which temperature the camera automatically powers off during use. When set to 'High,' you can keep shooting even when the camera gets hotter than usual.

This camera also has a few extra features aimed at vloggers and social media enthusiasts. These include a 'Beauty Effect' feature that retouches aspects of your photo, like smoothing out the skin, making the teeth look whiter, and enlarging the eyes. There's also a more basic 'Soft Skin Effect' that smooths out faces and adjusts skin tones.

The Sony ZV-1 has three different continuous shooting modes: 'Lo,' 'Mid,' and 'Hi.' The 'Hi' continuous shooting mode is only available when using the electronic shutter, and it can shoot up to a max of 24 fps. Note, however, that when using shutter speeds slower than 1/200s, the burst rate caps out at about 20 fps. The 'Mid' and 'Lo' speeds can be used with either the mechanical or electronic shutter; 'Mid' shoots at 10 fps, while 'Lo' maxes out at 4 fps.

Unfortunately, the buffer fills up quickly with burst shooting, and once full it takes about a minute for the ZV-1 to empty, which can slow you down when time is critical, like when shooting wildlife or sports.

The Sony ZV-1 has a fantastic autofocus system. It has several different area and tracking modes, and with Sony's 'Real-Time AF' tracking, the camera can seamlessly switch back and forth between object tracking and face/eye tracking when it detects a human subject in the frame. You can also set the 'Subject Detection' to prioritize either humans or animals, like cats and dogs. That said, the AF points don't cover the entire frame, so it can't track subjects to the very edges of the frame.

The Sony ZV-1 doesn't have built-in sensor-shift stabilization, but it has an optical stabilization feature called 'SteadyShot'. Overall, it does an okay job of stabilizing the image for photos, though you'll need to use a tripod if you want to capture clear shots at shutter speeds slower than 1/30s.

The Sony ZV-1 has great RAW dynamic range. At its base ISO, it captures a broad range of detail in shadows and highlights, and, though it drops off a bit, it's still good even as you raise the ISO. You can only push the camera's smaller sensor so far, and there's noticeable noise when you try to recover shadow detail in a photo that's underexposed by a couple of stops.

Photos taken on the Sony ZV-1 aren't the sharpest but still look good as far as sharpness goes. You're unlikely to notice a steep decline in sharpness as you raise the ISO.

JPEG color accuracy on the Sony ZV-1 is excellent. Most colors are true to life straight out of the camera, although it struggles a bit with reds and deep blues. Sony cameras also tend to render skin tones more coolly than competitors like Canon. Thankfully, the colors stay roughly the same as you raise the ISO.

The Sony has excellent noise handling when shooting in JPEG. Though noise becomes noticeable at higher ISO settings, the camera still does a good job of processing JPEG photos to keep noise to a minimum, allowing you to shoot in more dim conditions without compromising the quality too much.

The Sony ZV-1 has decent noise handling when shooting in RAW. There's minimal digital noise at moderate ISO values, though the higher you raise it, the noisier and less usable the image.

The Sony ZV-1 can shoot Full HD (1080p) and 4k video. It also has several Log profiles, including S-Log 2 and S-Log 3, as well as HLG, HLG1, HLG2, and HLG3, to take advantage of the camera's full dynamic range.

The Sony ZV-1 also comes with a detachable windscreen meant to reduce wind noise when shooting outside. Although it can't completely get rid of ambient background noise, it's still helpful if you don't have an auxiliary mic and are stuck with the camera's built-in microphone.

Although it lacks higher frame rates suitable for slow-mo capture, the Sony ZV-1 can record 4k video at up to 30 fps. Unfortunately, it can only shoot 4k video with a slight 1.12x crop.

The Sony ZV-1 has poor internal recording specs in 4k. It's limited to 4:2:0 subsampling and 8-bit color depth, meaning the camera can only capture a limited amount of color information, giving you less to work with when processing videos. It can also only output video files under 100 Mbps, resulting in lower-quality video, though smaller files will also reduce your transfer speeds.

Unfortunately, you can only record for a maximum of five minutes in 4k, and the camera frequently overheats and shuts down if you record a lot of 4k videos continuously. By default, 'Auto Power OFF Temp' is set to 'Standard', which is how the camera was tested for overheating. However, if you set 'Auto Power OFF Temp' to 'High', the camera lets you record for longer than five minutes and doesn't shut down until the camera reaches a higher temperature. When set to 'High', the camera overheats about the same amount of times, but it takes longer to cool down in between interruptions.

The Sony ZV-1 has a superb autofocus system for 4k video. It reliably keeps moving subjects in focus, even when they're moving around the frame or popping in and out. Thanks to its 'Real-Time AF Tracking', it can automatically detect a human face and switch seamlessly to object tracking if the subject turns around. You can set 'Subject Detection' to either 'Human' or 'Animal,' which works best on pets or larger animals. There are also options to fine-tune how the autofocus performs, including the speed at which it racks focus and how sensitive the focus is.

This camera also features several specialized autofocus modes and features that can be useful to vloggers. These include 'Product Showcase', which is great for beauty or product vloggers because it automatically shifts focus to objects held up in the frame without having to block your face. There's also a 'Background Defocus' function, controlled by the C1 button by default, which toggles between an f/1.8 aperture and f/5.6 to instantly adjust the depth of field and get a bokeh effect.

The Sony ZV-1 has excellent stabilization when shooting 4k video. In video mode, unlike in photo mode, the camera uses electronic compensation in conjunction with optical stabilization, which you can configure in the 'SteadyShot' setting in the menu. There are two different levels of stabilization for video: 'Standard' and 'Active'. The camera is particularly effective at reducing camera shake when moving more quickly but also does a great job when simply walking. Enabling stabilization incurs an additional 1.15x crop on the already cropped 4k footage.

The Sony ZV-1 produces good-quality 4k video in more controlled lighting conditions, but it's only decent in low light.

Note: The auto white balance on this camera tends to be inconsistent, especially when shooting video. The color temperature can shift drastically, becoming very cold and blue when a subject approaches the camera before shifting back to a warmer tone as they move away again. This can be distracting, but you can set a fixed white balance value when shooting video to avoid it.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of noticeable rolling shutter effect in 4k. It's most noticeable with vertical lines like signposts or buildings looking skewed when panning quickly from one side to another. However, it can also be distracting during vlogs by distorting things in the background and making videos appear more wobbly if you turn quickly or suddenly.

The Sony ZV-1 can record FHD video at up 120 fps. It also has a High Frame Rate (HFR) mode that can record super slow-motion footage at 240fps, 480fps, or 960fps. You can set the video output to 24p, 30p, or 60p to get varying levels of slow-mo.

The Sony ZV-1 has great 1080p internal recording capability, especially considering it's a compact camera. Though Sony says it has a 13-hour time limit, you're limited by the battery, so you can only achieve recordings of that length if you plug the camera into an external power source while shooting. Also, when recording at 120 fps, the time limit decreases to five minutes. However, it's still limited to 8-bit 4:2:0 recording, giving you less latitude when processing and color grading your footage.

The Sony ZV-1 has fantastic autofocus performance in 1080p. It consistently keeps moving subjects in focus, even when moving around the frame or popping in and out. You can set 'Subject Detection' to either 'Human' or 'Animal,' which is good for tracking your pets or larger animals.

The camera also has additional autofocus modes useful for vlogging, including 'Product Showcase', which quickly switches focus to any objects held up in the frame without covering your face. Also, by default, the C1 button activates the 'Background Defocus' function, which instantly adjusts the lens aperture from f/1.8 to f/5.6 or vice versa, which is good if you want to quickly shift between having a deep or shallow depth of field.

Same as 4k, the Sony ZV-1 uses joint optical and electronic stabilization for videos. It does a superb job of reducing camera shake when shooting handheld in 1080p resolution.

The video quality is okay in 1080p. It looks decent in brighter lighting conditions, but it doesn't perform very well in low light, with some noticeable grain and loss of shadow detail.

There's less rolling shutter distortion in 1080p, although there's still some noticeable skewing with vertical lines, especially when panning more quickly.

The Sony ZV-1 has just a single SD card slot that's rated for UHS-I cards. You can still use a UHS-II card, but the UHS-I rating means there's minimal speed advantage in doing so.

The Sony ZV-1 has a good amount of inputs and outputs. Thankfully for vloggers, it includes a microphone input, meaning you can connect an auxiliary mic, but unfortunately, there's no headphone jack.