Sony ZV-E10 Camera Review

The Sony ZV-E10 has a relatively compact body, making it very portable and easy to store. It's also lightweight, especially when paired with a smaller lens like the Sony 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, meaning it won't cause much fatigue during longer shooting sessions, and you can easily fit it into a small camera bag.

The camera feels well-built. It's made of plastic and feels similar in build quality to the Sony a6100, though it's a step down from the magnesium alloy body of the Sony a6400. The battery compartment and inputs (except for the microphone jack) are covered by sturdy-feeling doors. The buttons are clicky and offer good physical feedback, too. Another nice touch is the fixed shoulder strap attachment points, which won't rattle around and cause noise when recording vlogs or videos.

The Sony ZV-E10 has two command dials: a top dial near the back thumb rest and the control wheel on the back, which also acts as a directional pad to navigate the menu.

• Sony ZV-E10 camera body
• Sony E 16-50mm 3.5-5.6/PZ OSS lens
• Sensor cap
• Front and rear lens caps
• Shoulder strap
• Wind screen for microphone
• 1x Sony NP-FW50 battery
• USB-A to USB-C cable
• AC adapter
• Startup guide and documentation

The camera feels fairly comfortable to shoot with. It doesn't have the largest or most comfortable handgrip, especially for larger hands, but the grippy texture feels nice. The handgrip is notably smaller than Alphas like the Sony a6100 and the Sony a6600, but it's more suitable for a front-facing selfie grip, which is in keeping with its vlogging-oriented design. The buttons are fairly well-placed and make it easy to adjust settings, although they feel somewhat cramped for larger hands.

The screen is fully articulated and has a decent resolution. Thankfully, it gets bright enough that you can still see what's on the monitor in sunnier conditions. Unfortunately, touch functionality is limited to selecting focus points, subject tracking, or touch shutter.

This model uses Sony's older user interface. It isn't the most clearly laid-out, with settings buried in sub-menus that aren't very intuitively organized. You also can't use the touchscreen to navigate it. That said, there's a quick menu that gives you access to commonly used settings, and you can also create your own custom menu to group your most-used settings and features for quicker access.

Battery performance is great. It's rated for 440 shots according to CIPA standards, which you should take with a grain of salt for real-world usage. However, the rating is helpful as a comparison tool, and compared to similar APS-C mirrorless cameras, the ZV-E10 can last a long time, depending on your settings and usage habits. For reference, it has nearly twice the battery life of the compact Sony ZV-1 in both photo and video. The camera also doesn't overheat when recording video continuously for long periods, and you can keep using it while it charges over USB.

The Sony ZV-E10 has four different continuous shooting speeds: 'Lo', 'Mid', 'Hi', and 'Hi+'. The 'Lo' speed setting has a max burst rate of about 4 fps, 'Mid' has a max of 6 fps, 'Hi' has a max of 8 fps, and 'Hi+' has a max of about 11 fps. With the electronic shutter enabled for silent shooting, the camera can shoot at a max speed of 8 fps, which is great for shooting skittish wildlife or taking photos in venues where you need to be discreet.

It has a decent-sized photo buffer, so you can capture a lot of JPEGs or a fair amount of RAW files before the camera's buffer fills up. Unfortunately, it takes a very long time for the buffer to empty once full, which can interrupt your shooting at a critical moment.

Autofocus performance is good overall, although it's a bit less consistent than APS-C cameras from Sony's Alpha lineup, especially when using the default AF settings. Thankfully, you can fine-tune the AF by adjusting its sensitivity and speed.

Overall, the camera does a good job of recognizing different subjects and finding the intended target. Once it locks onto a subject, it's sticky and does a pretty good job of keeping up, although it can lose focus with quicker or more erratic subjects. It sometimes also fails to detect faces, even in adequate lighting conditions, more so than Alpha cameras like the Sony a6400 or the Sony α6600. Unlike those cameras, there's no focus priority setting on the ZV-E10 when using its continuous shooting mode, which may account partially for the difference in performance.

If you stick with a single focus point rather than relying on the camera's auto tracking, you can get fantastic results. The camera can quickly and accurately gauge distance to the subject and has no trouble keeping up as you follow along. Of course, using a lens with a good focusing motor goes a long way here.

The Sony ZV-E10 doesn't have in-body image stabilization, but you can use optically stabilized lenses to shoot handheld at slower shutter speeds. When paired with the optically stabilized Sony E 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, it does a good job of stabilizing the image, which will help if there's limited light and you need to lower your shutter speed.

The Sony ZV-E10 has great usable dynamic range. It does a good job of preserving shadow detail in high-contrast scenes. You can also pull out a lot of detail in underexposed images, and while pushing the exposure too far results in visible noise, you do have a bit of leeway to make adjustments without sacrificing image quality too much.

The Sony ZV-E10 can resolve an impressive amount of detail thanks to its high-resolution sensor. Even when cropping in, there's plenty of clarity. It's comparable to Sony's APS-C Alpha cameras, which is no surprise since it borrows its sensor from the Sony a6100.

The Sony ZV-E10 has great RAW noise handling, meaning you can shoot at higher ISOs in low light settings without introducing too much light or color noise. You also have a fair amount of leeway to make exposure adjustments to your photos without introducing extensive noise.

JPEGs have very little noise as you raise the ISO, so you can shoot in dimmer lighting conditions without sacrificing much quality.

The Sony ZV-E10 supports Log recording with S-Log 2 and S-Log 3, as well as HLG 1-3. It also has ten different pre-set picture profiles and several creative styles for you to choose from to alter the look and feel of your videos. Some of these picture profiles will allow you to simply record footage and use it straight out of the camera with no color grading, while others are flatter and require various levels of color grading to be usable. You can also customize and fine-tune each profile to suit your preference.

The camera can record 4k video at 24p without a crop, which is great for more cinematic-looking footage. It also records 4k 30p, which is a little more natural-looking, although 30p recording imposes a noticeable 1.22x crop.

Internal recording capability is great in 4k. While the camera can't achieve the highest bit rates, it's more than enough for vlogging and YouTube content. Likewise, while 8-bit 4:2:0 color recording is limiting if you want to record with Log profiles and have more control over the final look of your videos, it's sufficient for beginners who are just getting started with Log recording and color grading.

While Sony states in its online user guide that recording time limits vary depending on the camera's 'Auto Power OFF Temp' setting, we didn't encounter a time limit on recording during our testing.

The autofocus system performs excellently in 4k, particularly after you fine-tune the AF settings. Unlike the older Alphas, the Sony ZV-E10 includes settings like 'Autofocus Transition Speed' and 'Autofocus Subj. Shift Sensitivity' with a wider range of options to help you fine-tune the AF performance.

By default, the transition speed is set to the fastest option ('7' or 'Fast'), and subject shift sensitivity is set to the lowest value ('1' or 'Locked On'), which seem to be tailored towards vlogging by keeping the AF quick and locked onto your face. However, we found that the camera performs a little worse than comparable Sonys like the Sony a6100 or the Sony a6400 when using these default settings. With these settings set in the middle to more closely match the default 'Autofocus Tracking Sensitivity' and 'Autofocus Drive Speed' settings of the Sony Alpha 6x00 lineup, the ZV-E10's AF performance aligns more closely with those cameras.

Additionally, this camera has some specialized features to help certain kinds of vloggers, including 'Product Showcase' and 'Background Defocus', both of which were introduced on the Sony ZV-1. 'Product Showcase' automatically shifts focus to an object held up in the frame without prioritizing your face, while 'Background Defocus' toggles between a blurred or clear background with the press of a button, so you can quickly get a shallow or wide depth of field.

4k video quality is good in more controlled lighting conditions, and it does an okay job in low light. Overall, video looks fairly crisp and detailed. In low light, when tested using our standardized methodology, 4k video footage shows a lot of visible noise, but the camera renders details well. However, low light video looks a lot cleaner if you set the aperture to its widest setting, which is f/4 when using the kit lens. You can see this for yourself here.

Unfortunately, there's very bad rolling shutter distortion in 4k, similar to the Sony a6100. The slanting of vertical objects in the frame is very noticeable, even with relatively slow camera movements.

The Sony ZV-E10 has a ton of frame rate options in 1080p. It can record FHD video at up to 120 fps, though recording in 1080p / 120 fps incurs a slight crop. Still, this is great if you want to incorporate slow-motion or super slow-motion footage into your videos, whether for cinematic emphasis or to slow down high-speed action.

Internal recording capability is great in 1080p. As with 4k, bit rates are somewhat limited, but on the upside, smaller bit rate capture puts less strain on your PC when editing and allows for quicker upload speeds. There's no recording time limit in 1080p, either, so you can record for as long as you need to without stopping.

Autofocus is excellent in 1080p. The Sony ZV-E10 does an amazing job of keeping moving subjects in focus. You can fine-tune the AF sensitivity and transition speed, making it easier to adjust to suit your needs. However, while the camera can detect and keep up with moving subjects very well, it isn't as reliable as some other Sony cameras, like the Sony a6100 or even the Sony ZV-1.

The Sony ZV-E10 records decent-quality 1080p video. It looks good in controlled lighting conditions. However, it gets quite noisy when shooting in low light using an f/8 aperture and Auto ISO. To get cleaner footage, you can use the widest aperture, which is f/4 when using the kit lens. You can see an example of that here.

There's a lot less rolling shutter effect when shooting in 1080p than in 4k. However, some slanting in vertical lines and objects is still apparent with faster camera movements.

The camera has a single SD card slot rated for UHS-I cards, which means it can't take advantage of faster UHS-II cards. That said, it's fine for its intended audience: those who do casual video or photo work and don't necessarily need a second card on the go as a backup.

There's a full set of inputs and outputs for video and vlogging. These include a microphone input, headphone jack, and Micro HDMI port. The mic input is also well-placed near the top of the camera, so you can easily mount a mic on the hot shoe on top without cables getting in the way.