Sony A7 IV Review: The Hybrid Workhorse Gets Better as the Price Drops
The Sony A7 IV came out in late 2021 and quietly became the default answer to “which full-frame camera should I buy?” Wedding shooters bought it. YouTubers bought it. People who just wanted one camera that did everything bought it. Five years on, with the A7 V now on shelves, the A7 IV hasn’t stopped making sense. It’s simply cheaper.
That’s the story here. The camera didn’t change. The value did.
At its heart is a 33MP back-side illuminated sensor paired with the Bionz XR processor lifted from the A1. Thirty-three megapixels was an odd number when it launched. It turned out to be a smart one. You get enough room to crop a wildlife frame or pull a vertical out of a horizontal, and the files stay small enough that a wedding of 3,000 frames doesn’t choke your laptop.
Video review: Gordon Laing
What it does well
Autofocus is the reason most people stay with Sony, and the A7 IV is a big part of why. Real-time tracking just works. Point a single AF area at a face, half-press, and the camera follows that person around the frame. Eye detection covers humans, animals and birds. For events and portraits it’s about as close to “set and forget” as cameras got in this generation.
Video is where it pulled ahead of the A7 III it replaced. You get 4K at 30p oversampled from the full sensor width, and it looks clean and detailed. You get 10-bit 4:2:2 internally, S-Log3 and S-Cinetone, the same color profile Sony’s cinema cameras use. S-Cinetone is the quiet hero. Skin looks good straight out of the camera, so people who don’t want to grade can just shoot.
The handling was a real upgrade too. The screen flips out fully to the side, which matters if you film yourself. There’s a 3.68-million-dot viewfinder, a deeper grip, and a dedicated photo/video/S&Q switch under the mode dial so you can keep separate settings for stills and video. One card slot takes CFexpress Type A or SD, the other takes SD. The big NP-FZ100 battery lasts a full day of normal shooting.
Where it falls short
4K at 60p needs a Super 35 crop of about 1.5x. That’s the A7 IV’s most famous weakness, and it still stings. Your 24mm becomes a 36mm the moment you want smooth slow motion. Rolling shutter is also noticeable in full-width 4K, so quick pans can wobble.
Burst shooting tops out at 10 frames per second, and you need compressed RAW to hold that rate for long. That’s fine for weddings and portraits. It’s not a sports camera.
The rear screen is also small and low resolution by current standards. You’ll notice it if you came from anything newer.
Who should buy it
The A7 IV is the smart buy for anyone who wants Sony’s lens catalog and autofocus without paying for the newest body. The E-mount has the deepest third-party lens support of any system: Sigma, Tamron, Viltrox and Samyang all make glass for it, and that’s a bigger deal than any single spec on this camera.
Look at it next to its rivals. The Canon EOS R6 Mark II shoots faster and handles 4K60 without a crop, but it has 24MP. The Nikon Z6III has the better viewfinder and the faster sensor. The A7 IV sits between them as the all-rounder with more resolution than either.
If you shoot mostly stills with some video, buy it. If you need uncropped 4K60, look elsewhere. And if you find a clean used copy, it’s one of the best-value full-frame cameras on the market right now.