What is Sony Alpha A5000?
The Sony Alpha A5000 is a small, light and affordable compact system camera that takes the NEX compact system camera range and moves it under the ‘Alpha’ name. It costs around £400 with the 16-50mm 'PZ' lens sold with the NEX-3N.
Watch our Sony Alpha A5000 video preview
Sony Alpha A5000: Design and Specs
It looks a lot like the previous NEX-series cameras, but the Sony Alpha A5000 is the lightest compact system camera to feature Wi-Fi. We imagine this is because the super-small Nikon J-series cameras do not have Wi-Fi built-in yet.
Like the lower-end NEX cameras, the A5000 body is made of plastic. It’s an awful lot like the NEX-3N, but with a slightly more pronounced grip.
The Sony Alpha A5000 has a solid 20-megapixel APS-C sensor, but is all about the point and shoot approach to photography. There are no dedicated physical controls on the body beyond the shutter button and a flash release, leaving you to make any alterations to settings with the menu D-pad and the touchscreen.
There’s also no viewfinder and no hot-shoe up top to let you buy one. You can upgrade the lens with a Sony Alpha A5000, but little else.
All your composing has to be done with the 3-inch, 180-degree-tilting screen. It’s a 460k dot LCD display.
Its core features beyond the more advanced Wi-Fi and NFC connections are pretty basic, but image quality should be strong. As well as having an APS-C size sensor, the Sony Alpha A5000 uses a Bionz X sensor of the same family as the more expensive Alpha A7 and RX10.
As with many more accessible cameras, there’s a dedicated movie record button that sits behind the shutter button for quick video shooting. It’ll shoot video at 1080p resolution.
Common to the previous NEX-series cameras, the Sony Alpha A5000 uses the E-mount family of lenses. An obvious partner for this particular camera is the E16mm f/2.8 pancake. The two would make an extremely small and light package for an interchangeable lens APS-C sensor camera.
First Impressions
The Sony Alpha A5000 isn’t anywhere near as interesting as the Sony Alpha A7, the RX1R or even the RX10 bridge camera. However, it’s a solid development to the renamed NEX range, taking the NEX-3N and adding NFC and Wi-Fi to it. It’s probably not worth the upgrade from a previous-gen NEX CSC, but worth closer investigation if you’re out for a lower-cost compact system camera.
Next, check out our best cameras round-up