SONY ZV-E1

£2349 (body only) / go.stuff.tv/zve1

Even influencers go on holiday… and if you’re harbouring dreams of Youtube or Tiktok stardom, your smartphone just isn’t going to cut it for capturing your summer adventures to share with the world. Enter Sony’s video-centric new ZV-E1: the first model in its vlog-friendly ZV range to come with a full-frame sensor.

There might only be 12.1MP on this 35mm CMOS, but the sensor’s mammoth physical size makes for astounding image quality. It’s the same one you’ll find in the company’s beloved A7S III, in fact, and its similarly brilliant in low-light conditions.

Toss in Sony’s much-improved colour science and you’ve got beautifully cinematic footage straight out of the camera, made all the better by the fact that you can rely on the tracking autofocus to keep locked onto your subject. Thanks to some AI cleverness, it’s able to recognise a range of subjects from human faces to animals and aeroplanes.

Video can be captured in 4K quality at anything from 24fps to (after the post-launch firmware update) 120fps, making it possible to produce slo-mo as smooth and slick as an otter’s pelt.

Level woman

You can do all this without a tripod too, thanks to the new Dynamic Active Steadyshot, which is some of the best image stabilisation we’ve seen on a Sony. The only downside with this setting is the rather severe crop it applies, so if you like to walk-and-vlog you’ll probably need to invest in an ultra-wide-angle lens.

There are other shortcuts too, such as the single SD card slot, micro rather than full-size HDMI and no viewfinder; and while you can take decent stills on this thing, its lack of a mechanical shutter makes it much more of a video specialist than the A7S III.

Still, this is a fantastic deal for the money, and thanks to its new touchscreen interface and a raft of simplified vlogging functions it’s able to cater to beginners as well as veteran videographers, all while being compact enough to bring anywhere – lens permitting.

Key specs

● 12.1MP full-frame CMOS ● 4K @ 120fps ● 3in rotating touchscreen

● 121x72x54mm, 483g

STUFF SAYS Like a cheaper, smaller A7S III with superb video skills ★★★★★