Sony Alpha NEX-7 Pro Reviews

The NEX-7 is certainly a great little compact system camera and one that comes closest to the performance and features of a DSLR – something I am quite sure endear it to many advanced and enthusiast photographers. Certainly the electronic viewfinder and the three dial system alone merit all the credit they can get. The camera is not flawless but is commendable, as it arguably delivers the best image and video quality of its class. But this comes at a price and in this respect I’m unconvinced that is particularly good value for money, especially when up against its stablemate, the NEX-5N – an alternative for users that can live without the EVF and the smooth manual operation of the NEX-7. Yet for creative, advanced photographers that want a flexible, powerful and intelligent CSC, its features will be of greater value and likely worth every penny.

Sony's high-end mirrorless camera, the Alpha NEX-7 is a top performer brimming with features, but a camera of this caliber deserves a better kit lens.

This conclusion is hardly a surprise. If you’re looking for a camera that’ll last for years and has tons of options to help you grow as a photographer, buy the Sony alpha NEX-7. The NEX-7 is a winner and a clear Editor’s Choice. If you must have it now, you’ll pay a premium as Sony ramps up production. According to company execs, a lot of the demand should be satisfied in April/May. We’d wait and save so we could buy the NEX-7 with the Zeiss f/1.8 24mm prime lens. We know that’s a $2,000 package but it’s definitely worth it.

Sony NEX-7 is one of the most exciting cameras of 2011, and a real breakthrough product in a number of key areas. We predict this will be one of the most popular cameras Sony's ever manufactured. If you've been considering a camera purchase anywhere near its price range, you owe it to yourself to give the Sony NEX-7 a serious look.

Ever since the NEX range was launched, photography enthusiasts have been waiting for a model that would exploit its potential to the full and the NEX-7 finally delivers on that promise. What makes the difference is the outstandingly good electronic viewfinder and the three dial control system augmented by navigation and AF/MF/AEL buttons. Add to that a high degree of customisability and you have a compact system camera with all the versatility and handling advantages you'd expect from an advanced DSLR. The NEX-7 comes with an impressive specification sheet and performance to match. Its 24.3 Megapixel sensor produces excellent quality images that are at least the equal of those produced by most APS-C DSLRs to date. It complements these with HD movies sporting full control over exposure and also has very fast continuous shooting. There are some niggles, but they're mainly firmware issues - something that Sony's shown a willingness to quickly address in the past with the NEX range. But it's a fantastic start nonetheless, and with the promise of more E-Mount lenses on the way the NEX-7 looks set to be the model that photo enthusiasts will aspire to and other manufacturers will be looking to emulate and surpass. For now though, it sets the standard for high-end CSC bodies and deservedly receives our Highly Recommended award.

The Sony NEX-7 is a high specification mirrorless system camera with a high resolution sensor, high speed shooting, quick performance and an excellent OLED viewfinder. It is capable of taking detailed colourful photos in a variety of situations with good ISO performance up to ISO3200. Handling is good with the body providing a large rubberised grip and a number of external controls. The speed of the Sony NEX-7 is extremely quick and only matched so far by the Sony NEX-5N in the mirrorless market. The tri-navi controls and quite large amount of customisation of the cameras controls can help give you quicker access to the options you want to change, which should mean you need to visit the menus of the camera much less. Which can only be a good thing. The Sony NEX system has a number of lenses available, with the number of premium lenses set to increase over the next couple of years the Sony NEX-7 could make an excellent system.

An excellent camera for advanced photographers that's fun and fluid to shoot with, the Sony Alpha NEX-7's few flaws don't seriously detract from an otherwise winning package.

The lower-end NEX cameras are excellent, but they’re designed for a user wanting something between the simple point-and-shoot and the enormous and complex DSLR. The NEX-7 isn’t such a compromise: it’s not quite in DSLR territory without more manual control, but it’s probably close enough for most people. It’s also so customizable that it could potentially be as easy to control as your DSLR, if you take the time to tweak it. Plus, it takes wonderful pictures and videos, and is adaptable to almost any lighting situation. Even the lens selection is excellent, provided your budget is high enough. But the NEX-7 is priced like the high-end camera it is, and for some users it could be overkill. One of the best features of the NEX-5N and C3 is simplicity — unexperienced users can pick up one of those cameras, and start taking excellent pictures with no work or know-how. The NEX-7 is easy, too, but it forgoes a bit of the simplicity and minimalism for power and control — consider that tradeoff (and the price premium) carefully especially before you buy the NEX-7 over the NEX-5N, which has a similarly impressive spec sheet. There’s also a tradeoff with more expensive cameras: DSLRs with optical viewfinders will still give you more accurate framing for your photos, and they offer more in the way of speed and manual control. Plus, there’s a whole world of full-frame cameras out there, and if you’re interested in buying a D4 or a 1D X down the line, it’s worth considering which ecosystem you want to invest in now.

As you may have gathered, we're quite smitten with the Sony Alpha NEX-7. The camera offers many features previously only accessible to full-size DSLR owners, delivering excellent performance in a body size only nominally larger than the NEX-C3 and 5N. With the exact same sensor that Sony uses in the Alpha A77, you can expect DSLR-quality images with the NEX-7, and the camera's 10 frames-per-second consecutive shooting mode really blurs the line between mirrorless and traditional ILCs. There's definitely room for improvement in the high-ISO department, but given the camera's size and even its $1,200 price tag, we're willing to live without noise-free ISO 16,000 low light images.

The next step in Sony's evolution of its NEX interchangeable-lens-but-no-bulky-internal-mirror camera system is technically brilliant: an amazingly detailed and clean image sensor shoehorned into a reasonably compact camera body that's incredibly well built and full of features (an excellent electronic viewfinder, tilting screen, plenty of dials for manual control). Using the camera in either its automatic or manual modes isn't as effortless as it should be, though, with some annoying quirks that hamper easy usage. We think they'd mostly be easy to address in a future firmware update, though.

The NEX-7 is the Sony interchangeable lens mirrorless for folks who'd like to shoot with a DSLR but don't want the size and weight penalties associated with that sort of platform. Just to make sure they didn't limit their audience, Sony included typical point-and-shoot features such as a smile shutter, face detection and registration, automatic and scene shooting modes. But they also included a boatload of enthusiast level hardware and performance features that clearly move this camera toward the DSLR end of the performance spectrum and audience. The NEX-7 boasts a terrific viewfinder and minimal shutter lag. The built-in flash drops from a 7 to a 6 guide number, but recycle times are dramatically improved. Auto focus performance in good conditions is quick. A peaking feature assists users with manual focus. A new user interface and control layout is designed to give advanced shooters quick control over many settings affecting image quality and capture. Power up time, while not DSLR quick, is still pretty fast. Single shot-to-shot times are dramatically improved over the first-generation NEX-5, approaching DSLR quick. Near-DSLR performance in many categories doesn't come cheap - it will take a DSLR-sized payment to put an NEX-7 under your Christmas tree, if you can find one by then.

A delight to use with outstanding photo and video quality – and a price to match.

All the usual NEX traits: outstanding image and video quality, lethargic autofocus, iffy focus from the kit lens. Sumptuous ergonomics only just help it to justify the high price

The Sony NEX-7 is a fantastic compact system camera that firmly delivers on its early promise, delivering a remarkably customisable camera that really can be configured to suit many different users. The combination of an excellent built-in viewfinder, handy pop-up flash, tiltable LCD screen and a high-resolution APS-C sensor, all in a light and compact body, simply can't be beaten. It may cost more than the competition, suffer from slow-ish auto-focusing in low-light, have an initially confusing control layout, and perhaps most seriously suffer from a lack of fast E-mount lenses, but its compelling list of features and unique user interface are too good to ignore.

When the NEX-7 was first announced, it looked as though Sony had gathered together a set of enthusiasts' wish lists and built a camera to exceed them all. From the compact 'rangefinder style' body with its built-in electronic viewfinder, through the high resolution sensor offering 24MP stills and Full HD 60p video, to the triple-control-dial interface, it ticked all the right boxes on paper. There's little doubt that the NEX-7 is one of the most exciting cameras of 2011. In the flesh, it lives up to almost all of that initial promise. The EVF is excellent, stills image and video quality both superb, and the handling is remarkably good for such a small camera. The use of three dials to control each of the main exposure parameters makes so much sense that it seems odd no-one's done it quite like this before. The fact that these dials can also be used to change a wide range of other settings, cycled through by pressing a button on the top plate, borders on genius. In fact the NEX-7 is so good in so many respects that any criticism almost feels like nit-picking. It's not perfect, but then again no camera is, and its imperfections can generally be overcome.

The NEX7's design is an interesting mix: we're keen on the variety of controls, yet the ongoing lack of a mode dial and awkward placement of some controls does let the overall design down. Yet with customisation available to a range of buttons it's easier to command this NEX than any other model in the series - and that can only be a good thing. The OLED electronic viewfinder, as pulled from the Alpha A77, is a superb piece of kit and the very best you could hope to have for a Compact System Camera. However, it does milk battery life (which already isn't all too good at 335 shots per charge). Image quality is good, yet the ultra-high-resolution sensor does have its limits at higher ISO settings and wideangle lenses have issues with corner sharpness and distortion. This can be remedied with the use of more premium lenses, but there's a general lack of those available at the moment. Indeed the NEX-7's 18-55mm lens is the same standard as found boxed up with the rest of the NEX range (excluding, of course, the NEX-7's black paint job). With high expectations the NEX-7 succeeds on many levels, but with the CSC market highly competitive this high-priced model does also finds its limitations where focusing and design are concerned. Saying that, the NEX-7 is an impressive mix of features, high-resolution image quality and excellent 1080p movie mode. For some it'll be the perfect camera, though with an ‘indefinite delay' due to production problems you may want to get those pre-orders in to be among the first to own one...

The NEX-7 ticks some very big boxes. It’s got the electronic viewfinder department wrapped up and tied off with a big bow, the movie mode is great and the 10fps burst mode is an attractive option. Image quality is impressive, even more so when considering the huge 24.3-megapixel resolution that the camera delivers. But there are shortcomings: the design feels busy and somewhat crammed together, plus no mode dial and questionable controls placement can cause accidental mode adjustments when you don’t expect it. Is the world ready for a high-end CSC? Well, maybe. There’s a lot of good in the NEX-7 and it’s far better than its NEX-C3 and NEX-5N siblings, but the 7’s focusing system is weak compared to its main CSC rivals. Put the £1129 price in context and in light of the general lack of E-mount lenses and the NEX-7 might have been better placed to arrive a little later in the release schedule. It’s got some big pluses, but those are, in part, countered by the mentioned downsides and the fact the far better Sony A77 isn’t a whole lot more cash.

Despite the occasional shortfall, the NEX-7 is a very pleasant camera to use, especially when you've customised it to your particular way of shooting. The built-in OLED viewfinder is a real bonus, providing a bright, clear view, and having a hotshoe and input for an external microphone both add to the flexibility of the system. Overall, the NEX-7 is a very interesting camera due to its high specification, and it should win over some purely because of that.