Sony ZV-1 II Review | Trusted Reviews

Verdict

Sony’s baffling decision to remove optical stabilisation in this update to the ZV-1 rankles, but for vloggers who don’t film on the hoof there’s a lot to appreciate – chiefly the class-leading autofocus, intelligent microphone and compact design.

Introduction

The Sony ZV1-II (sometimes called the ZV-1M2) is an updated version of the ZV-1 originally launched by Sony in 2020. With its similar design, specs and features, it’s not until you dial down into the ZV-1 II that its differences become apparent – and when I encountered some of them, I wondered what possessed Sony to make the changes.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To start with the basics, the Sony ZV-1 II is a pocket-sized camera focussed very much on appealing to vloggers. While it can take still photos, they come secondary to video capture which, on paper, sounds quite impressive thanks to its 4K resolution, support for a range of colour profiles, a fast(ish) wide-angle zoom lens and built-in image stabilisation.

So, is Sony’s latest vlog camera a worthy investment for anyone looking for fame and fortune on YouTube? Or would a would-be content creator be better off buying a larger, pricier and more versatile mirrorless camera? Let’s find out.

Design

• Pocket-sized design and 292g weight
• Vari-angle touchscreen
• Multi Interface Shoe for digital accessories

As I said above, the ZV-1 II looks very similar to its predecessor, and that’s no bad thing. The camera is compact enough to fit into a jacket pocket (105.5 x 60 x 46.7mm) and lightweight enough that you’ll barely feel it in there; it’s 292g with a battery and memory card on board.

The body is now constructed from SORPLAS, a recycled plastic developed by Sony, and doesn’t feel any the worse for it. There’s nothing cheap or flimsy about the finish here – though there’s no weather-sealing or waterproofing either, so handle it with care on rainy days.

The main operational difference between the body of this camera and the original ZV-1’s is the position of the tripod mounting point on the bottom: it’s now offset so that it sits more centrally and better balanced when the screen is flipped out.

Whether that’s a good or bad change depends on how often you use the screen in this way; I found it a pretty comfortable setup myself and I suspect most vloggers will feel the same way.

The flip-out 3-inch vari-angle touchscreen remains unchanged. It’s a good screen in terms of usability and image quality, though the menus are small and sometimes you may touch an unintended on-screen icon when navigating them. Still, it’s nice to have so many controls available to use on the touchscreen.

Design-wise, the fact that the front-facing orientation of the screen doesn’t get obscured by cables plugged into the USB-C, micro HDMI or 3.5mm microphone sockets is welcome.

The physical controls are necessarily small and larger-fingered users may find them fiddly at times, but the only bit of annoyance I experienced was the partial covering of the on/off button when the ‘dead cat’ wind shield was attached. Even then, it’s not even close to deal-breaker levels of irritation.

Speaking of the windshield (also made of recycled plastic), it comes included in the box and does a fine job of reducing wind noise when covering the microphone. It slots in the ZV-1 II’s Multi Interface Shoe, which can also be used for first- and third-party accessories such as microphones and LED lights. I attached the DJI Mic 2’s receiver unit and found the process very slick. It’ll be even more so with Sony accessories like the ECM-G1 shotgun mic which doesn’t even require a cable.

Performance and Features

• Tracking hybrid autofocus system with 315 AF points
• Electronic image stabilisation
• ‘Intelligent’ directional microphone

Sony cameras rightly get a lot of praise for autofocus capabilities; the ZV-1 II is excellent in this regard. Armed with up to 315 focus points across the frame (273 for video) and the ability to recognise human and animal subjects (you can choose which of the two categories you want it to focus on), it’ll swiftly lock onto and track eyes and faces, keeping them in sharp focus even as they move around the frame.

This is a feature that most vloggers will certainly find valuable. They’ll also like the Product Showcase mode, which bypasses the eye- and face-tracking priority mode when something is held up in the centre of the frame, only to re-acquire face-tracking once that object is removed. It’s really handy for times you want to show something off in a video but don’t want to have to obscure your face completely to get the camera to focus on said object.

If autofocus lived up to my expectations, image stabilisation did not. The original ZV-1 had both optical and electronic stabilisation, while the ZV-1 II has only the latter. Not only does this mean that your video frame must undergo a sizeable crop when stabilisation is on, but it also reduces the effectiveness of the stabilisation full-stop.

It’s just not as good as I was expecting it to be for a 2024 vlogging camera and if you’re a walk-and-talk vlogger you’ll need to be careful with your movements if you want your footage to look ‘professionally’ smooth and stable. Having just come from reviewing the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro, which boasts fantastic electronic image stabilisation, I found the ZV-1 II’s efforts decidedly underwhelming. If you’re a photographer, it’s even worse: for stills, you can’t benefit from any form of stabilisation at all.

It should be noted that the camera can embed its video files (including non-stabilised ones) with gyroscope data. This allows electronic stabilisation to be added in postproduction using Sony’s Catalyst Browse desktop program. Having tried this, however, I found it to be a drawn-out and fussy process that didn’t yield much better results than the in-camera stabilisation. Needless to say, it still applies a significant crop to the original video file and reduces its resolution.

Vloggers should be more impressed with the in-camera audio recording. I was, anyway. Like its predecessor, there’s a three-capsule microphone able to record audio from both the front and rear of the camera, or just from one area. You can set this manually or use the Auto setting, which flicks between all directions and the front when it detects a face in front of the camera. Audio quality, particularly of voices, is clearer than I’ve come to expect from a compact camera’s built-in mic, but an external mic still yields much better results.

The camera uses removable NP-BX1 batteries. Those shooting often may want to invest in one or two extras, as I found I only got about 40 minutes of use out of a full charge when recording at 4K/24p.

You can recharge the batteries in-camera, however, and the USB-C port also works as a constant power supply, so if you’re recording at home you can rig up a cable and won’t have to worry about the battery at all. While I’m on the subject of the USB-C port, I should also point out that it allows the ZV-1 II to be used as a webcam when hooked up to a computer – albeit with a rather disappointing video format of 720p at 30 frames per second.

Video and Photo Quality

• 4K/30p or 1080/60p video with built-in ND filter
• S&Q mode allows Full HD slow motion up to 120fps
• 20.1MP still photos with RAW option

Video quality is where this camera lives and dies. It’s good for a compact camera, if not up to the standards of a mirrorless camera. I found the 1-inch sensor could do a decent job in tricky lighting, and chances are vlog footage from the ZV-1 II is going to look better than anything your phone can deliver. It also has a built-in ND filter, which can aid video shooting in particularly bright outdoor conditions. So, overall the image quality is decent.

That being said, there’s a lot of room for improvement. While I was able to shoot in various picture profiles including ‘flat’ S-Log3 to give me a greater level of control over post-production colour grading and correction, video is still 8-bit rather than 10-bit. This limited what I was able to do with it. I would have also liked the option to shoot 4K at 60fps (or 1080p slow motion footage at 240fps), and then there’s the aforementioned issue with image stabilisation being pretty ineffective.

While I wouldn’t really recommend the ZV-1 II for anyone who wants to do a lot of stills shooting – it’s a bit sluggish and there’s no stabilisation option – it’s entirely possible to get great-looking photos from it. It can shoot in RAW (which I used for the sample photos above) and its 20.1MP JPEGs also look sharp and colourful straight out of the camera.

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