Customer Ratings & Reviews

I’m only writing this review because I want that 400 dollars gift. Honest opinion I regret buying this camera. I take better pictures and video with an iPhone 14 camera. Now let’s get back to the 400 dollar gift card, I need this! I never won anything in my life, actually I should get compensated for buying that piece of peep camera, I wish I could return it but my toddler ripped up the box and I’m stuck with it. You win some, you lose some… but you live to fight another day

Overview - This camera is targeted squarely at beginner content creators looking to upgrade from their phones without spending a lot of money and I think Sony did a great job in that respect. This is probably the only camera under $800 or so that I would actually recommend. I run a media production company for a living so generally speaking, big, clunky, and expensive cameras are my bread and butter. However, after using this little Sony for a week or two, I think it’s found a permanent home in my backpack. Some of the pros: Size: It’s incredibly small and lightweight, more than you would think. It’s almost pocketable and weighs next to nothing. Shoots pictures as well as video: That may seem obvious but for something that’s marketed as a vlogging camera, I really appreciate that it can take stills as well. And the stills look pretty good too! (With one caveat that we’ll get to later). Can record video in 4k: For such a small and inexpensive camera, that’s pretty cool. The user interface is intuitive: I used to daily drive a Sony A6400 and the user experience is very similar to that, just simplified (which is a good thing in this case). The auto-standby feature is AMAZING: This probably seems like a minor thing but I promise it isn’t. When I first found out it puts itself on standby/powers off when you close the flippy screen with the actual LCD facing inward (but not when it’s facing outward), I was blown away. It’s such a small thing but it makes a HUGE difference in just a day to day quality of life sort of way. You never have to worry about turning it off, just close the screen. And when you want to use it, just flip the screen open. It really makes sure you get as much milage out of the (kinda tiny) battery as possible. Speaking of… The battery life rocks and it charges over USB-C: I pretty much never have to think about charging it which helps make it my choice for a backpack camera. It’s not all great though. There are a few cons that jump out to me… The battery and SD card slots are covered by the same door. This always irritates me on every camera that does this. Battery and media doors should be separate. That being said, a lot of cameras still have this setup so maybe I’m just over reacting - but it really bugs me. There’s no option to shoot RAW photos: I don’t see why this wasn’t included. It seems like a very doable thing with the hardware in this camera and would just make it an even better value. This is one of the only reasons I would hesitate to recommend this to someone. Shooting JPEG is fine to start but once you get comfortable and want to start editing your shots more, RAW is pretty much a must have. If you’re just using this for video then this complaint doesn’t really matter but it’s something to consider if you plan on using it for photos. Overall, I think if you’re in the market for this type of camera (and wouldn’t be better served by investing the money more into lighting or audio), this is a pretty cool piece of gear. Good job, Sony. Please add RAW photo capture in an update.

Eh not sure jus okay ,,..............................wouldnt buy again

I have been wanting a camera with flip screen since I love to record my deep thoughts for the masses. However, before this came into my life I would not always be in frame. Well this item solved that problem and many others I did not know I had. So here is the run down of my experience with this camera. The good: small light weight connects with bluetooth device (phone or grip) very quickly and easily controls are grouped in a way that makes it simple to find your settings you want half press focus is quick and spot on with all my pictures records to SD card (256 max) which is easy to find and cheap to buy mic is really good with very little distortion or tinny sounds. it is more high def mid range software you can download is very simple and quick to use it will store gyro data internally, making your vids smooth when you process using the camera software. screen flips and rotates with ease battery compartment is easy to access with tripod attached to bottom screen has red outline that shows up when I am recording, so I know that I am recording large sensor so low light is not much of a issue anymore wind muff does great job blocking the wind and other noises from coming through takes good pictures with the 20mpx sensor can record video in either HD (1080p) or 4k has slo-mo and hyperlapse (only one speed each, but still useful) has contrast based focus, so as long as you have defined colors you will always be in focus turns on and off really fast, so you will not have to fumble around and wait to take you pic battery can be charged with USB C cable while in the camera, which means you can connect to power source and keep on filming or taking pics long battery life for something this small. I have yet to run out of juice when going out and shooting has hdmi, usb-c, and mic input on the side to assist you in have many options during your shots large screen with touch controls that are very reactive to your input. Bad: non standard lens cap, that is really small and almost impossible to put back on the first try even with the 42mm thread, you can not add additional lens (zoom, etc) to it. you can only use a ND filter or CPL to improve the shots colors are a little washed out, but still workable with your editing software no real gripping area to hold like normal camera, so it might slip from your hands if you don't use a threaded grip or a tripod slightly more noise in the low light than I was lead to believe. It is better at capturing at night, but still has more artifacts than I would want All the bad things are more personal. So your experience may differ depending on your use. I am still glad I got it and will use it every chance I get. The fact I got so much for so little is fantastic.

One can capture superior photographs using one of the most recent iPhone models.

Christmas gift was defective in less than 45 days of purchase and I was not provided a refund without adding a $50 Bestbuy rewards account just for a return

Picked up to do some vlogging. In a low light condition it preformed okay, I wish it was a bit better. It was much easier to use compared to my g7.

The camera itself is good, but i have had nothing but problems with the software.

Needed a last minute camera replacement, this works great, and has a good battery life.

Too small and very complicated to understand Our first camera , wished we never purchased it

charge me money twice and did not return it. I called to Bestbuy fourth time and they still did not able to provide me a transaction id

Received a deffective item. Requested for a replacement within 24hrs, customer service gives multiple disclaimers would not let me speak to a supervisor. First deffective item and bad experience from bestbuy. 1000% dissapointing

If you're using your phone's front camera for your vlogging shots or still using a cheap webcam for your streams, this is probably the best upgrade for your dollar out there. It has most of the "prosumer" features you're probably going to need at one of the most affordable price points for "real" cameras. You're giving up a few higher end features here like a hot shoe and interchangeable lenses but that's what keeps this affordable and you probably don't really NEED those things as much as they're just cool. Setup is a piece of cake. It's a camera that's basically ready to go. Put a memory card in, install the battery and hit the power and you're ready to fiddle with all the settings and start taking pictures or recording video. There's a ton of settings if you're coming from a cheap digital camera or you're used to just your phone's camera. It was a little overwhelming from a non-photographer standpoint but I didn't mind playing around to get the best settings for what I was doing. There's a lot of versatility for this camera as well. It's clear that it's made to be a selfie vlogging camera from the flip forward screen to the microphone windscreen (I had to look up what this fuzzy little thing was in the book but it's a great little addition). From selfie range, it's easy to get your frame right and the microphone doesn't sound really bad. You aren't going to get a ton of the low end from your voice but it does a decent job picking your up and sounding clear for just a flat spot on the camera picking up the sound. Photos come out pretty good as well. Nothing to write home about if you already use your recently released phone's rear camera to be honest but they're good photos. If you want to carry a dedicated photo camera, this will get your some good pictures with settings your can't play around with on your phone so with some effort and experience you can probably get even better pictures but for me, the convenience of taking pictures with my phone can't be trumped. Especially with all the work that phones do in post processing now a days. I'll probably use this for photos and videos when I'm going to an event that I know I'm going to just be taking pictures non-stop, though. Video quality looks really good as well. You can only get 30fps for your 4K shots if that's what you're taking but you can go up to 120fps with 1080p shots. Again, things are very comparable to my iPhone 13 Pro Max's rear camera but blow away the front camera. If you have the skills, I'm sure there are amazing tweaks and settings you can do to get things to look perfect for every scenario. But from a non-professional standpoint, I find the picture quality to be great with most of the default settings. One thing that I think is overlooked for a camera like this is streaming on services like Twitch and YouTube. I replaced my $180 webcam with this camera (and bought a cheap quick-release thing to let me unmount it whenever I want to take it out of my setup) and the difference is night and day. The amount of control is fantastic when you're coming from not so cheap webcam. The most disappointing aspect of using this camera for streaming is that it's capped at 720p30 for streaming over USB-C. I'm not sure why this limitation needs to exist or if maybe they can bump that up to a solid 1080p60 with a firmware update in the future but it was sad to see when I tried it out. You CAN still use it with a micro-HDMI cable and an HDMI capture device, though. You'll get the full output that way. There's a setting to eliminate any of the UI elements on the HDMI output so you get a fully clear HDMI. The best part of using this as a webcam replacement is the flip forward screen that you can use to make sure you're in frame and everything looks good while you're streaming. My list of negatives is pretty short and they do focus around using the camera as a high quality streaming camrea for Twitch. The 720p output over USB-C is disappointing and means you'll need an additional cable as well as an HDMI capture device if you're looking to get more than 720p to your stream. Another thing that could be better is having more (all?) controls on the screen without needing to use the control wheel on the back. This downside also exists when taking vlog videos because you're probably looking at the screen flipped towards you and not the back of the camera. With my stream setup, the camera is fairly close to the wall and accessing the back of the camera is not super easy to do. So it's impossible to tweak every setting while looking at the frame I need to look at without using my phone to connect to the camera. There is a "button" on the screen that toggles the ability to touch certain controls on the screen to modify them but the controls available are limited (for instance, there's no manual/auto focus control on the screen). Having another control on the screen that basically just opens up the full menu would be amazing here. Speaking of controlling the camera with my phone, that's a thing you can do too! The setup is a little clunky and the performance could be better. I'm not 100% certain but I have to assume it's using 2.4Ghz wifi instead of 5Ghz so interference is an issue here but it might work fine for you. The most annoying part of the whole thing is how long it takes to control the camera from your phone. You need to launch the app, hit the "control camera" button and then connect and wait for it to connect to bluetooth and then disconnect you from your own wifi and connect directly to your camrea's wifi and then probably fail once and try again. So it's almost like a solid minute between deciding I need to tweak a setting and actually getting things going on my phone. When it's running on the phone, the video performance is pretty choppy but I've never used the phone to really look at the shot, I more care about being able to control some of the things I can't control from the screen without the control wheel. I understand having the phone connect directly to the camera since you'll probably be using this a lot when you're not on your home wifi, it's just a small annoyance and it pretty consistently fails with my iPhone on the first attempt but usually doesn't have an issue the second time. Overall, though, the phone connection is a saving grace to allowing me to control the phone when the back controls are not accessible and I can deal with the clunkiness for that ability. Overall, this camera is going to be my stream camera for a long time to come. The quality is top notch and with a quick release foot, it's easy to pop out and in and take the camera with me when I want to film something else or take some pictures of the kids. At it's price point, you can't really get much better than this. Sacrificing a couple of the bells and whistles that you get with a much more expensive professional entry (along with much more expensive lenses) is nothing because you probably won't need of those things anyways for what this camera is made to do. Make content better than using the front facing camera on your phone. The quality will rival the back facing camera on your phone as well so it's nice to have a dedicated piece of hardware that you can just use for all of your filming needs. Get this camera is you're looking for an upgrade.

No flash on this camera , every camera needs a lighting

Had it less than 4 months and already had to ship it off for defect

I was looking for a very easy to operate point and poke camera. This camera is far more complex than I need or want. I had quite a time attempting to take pictures and missed a few due to not understanding all the settings. I do not recommend this camera for anyone wanting a simple, easy to operate camera.

It was alright but the price could have been a little cheaper

If you’re into photography and videography, you would know that every camera model has its own purpose. The Sony ZV1F camera is designed specifically for vlogging so this is a camera that puts videography first, which is why it has the flip screen but no viewfinder. The camera would also be well suited for serious users who want to shoot straightforward video quickly, thanks to its compact design and the myriad of features available such as filters, exposures, and even creative options such as color presets, SLOG color grading and bokeh switch. Bottom line is, this is a camera that would generally save your time by having those options available for you as you record the video, as oppose to applying them in post process. I really like the small footprint of the camera. This is the camera that you can bring with you everywhere as you can easily slide it into the pocket of your cargo pants. It’s small but yet it’s powerful enough, which what gives it the edge against action cameras and mobile phones. Sony packs a 1-inch Exmor RS sensor with 20mm F/2.0 Zeiss Tessar T prime lens that gives you 20.1 megapixels for stills and up to 4K/30P with 100M bitrate. Decent specs and the lens does deserve the Zeiss’ big name. It’s important to note that you can only shoot stills in JPEG. It would be great if the camera can shoot RAW through future updates, but this seems to be unlikely to happen given that this camera is not primarily intended for photography. As expected, the camera gives you fairly fast auto focus response. Sony gives you active stabilization that will crop your video in exchange for a more stable clip. The active stabilization is ok, however it’s not as effective when walking in fast pace as I would expect it to be, considering what EIS can do these days. Also, I would like it more if the camera has a headphone jack so we can monitor the audio as we record the video but then again, we’re talking about a camera designed for straightforward shooting. As for Image quality, it is good. It’s sharp enough for a small camera. However, the rolling shutter is noticeable when you pan the camera a bit fast. Since this is a Sony, it works well with Sony’s external mic that makes use of Sony’s proprietary hot shoe. When paired with Sony’s new Vlogger shotgun microphone, you’d be getting clear audio with no hassle involved since the hot shoe supplies both the audio connection and power. I should say that even without using external microphone, the camera’s built-in microphone performs well and it is good enough for most users. As it is the case with other Sony vlogging cameras, you can use the camera as a webcam, which is a very nice and useful feature to have. For sure this camera performs better and gives you better image quality than your typical webcam in terms of low light capabilities and sharpness. To sum up, this camera lives up to what it is intended for; as long as you’re okay with some of its limitations.

Horrible at downloading once you record content. Takes hours to download. Not happy at all.

battery charger was missing. such an issue shows poor quality control at Best Buy stores.