Sony RX10 V review: Sony’s superzoom bridge camera gets an Alpha upgrade

Sony’s RX lineup is all about packing serious imaging hardware into fixed-lens camera bodies. The RX1 line covers compact full-frame cameras, the RX100 series handles pocket-sized compacts, and the RX10 range has always been the all-purpose superzoom option. The Sony RX10 V continues that idea, arriving after a long wait from the RX10 IV, which launched back in 2017.

Sony’s tagline for this camera is “Reach Further, Carry Less,” and that sums up the RX10 V neatly. This is a camera for anyone who wants a huge zoom range without committing to an interchangeable-lens system. Wildlife, birding, travel, sports, train spotting, plane spotting, and general outdoor photography are all obvious targets. A 24-600mm equivalent f/2.4-4 lens in a single body is still the RX10’s main selling point, and there are very few cameras that can offer both that kind of reach with this level of speed, autofocus, and optical quality.

The RX10 V is not a complete ground-up rebuild. It keeps the same 20.1MP 1-inch Exmor RS sensor and the same Zeiss Vario 24-600mm lens as its predecessor. But Sony has updated the camera where it arguably matters most, with its BIONZ XR processor, a dedicated AI processing unit, improved subject recognition, a redesigned body, a better viewfinder, a higher-resolution screen, and a much more modern control layout.

For anyone browsing the best bridge cameras or best cameras for wildlife, the RX10 V immediately, on paper, looks like one of the most complete fixed-lens options around – but does it do enough to convince that one lens is all you need?

Specifications

Price

The Sony RX10 V will cost $ 2,299.99 at launch in the US, £2,200 in the UK, €2,500 in Europe, and $2,899.99 in Canada, which is a fair old chunk of money more than the pre-discontinuation price of the RX10 IV, which cost just $1,699 USD, £1,500, and €2,000.

I'm sure the AI boom and various global conflicts affecting supply chains have had a hand in this increase, but considering the lens and sensor are the same as previously, a $600 premium for the processor and a facelift is quite a significant amount to pay. Although, admittedly, that processor unlocks a huge amount of new capability in terms of autofocus, speed, and video.

But to buy this, you really have to commit to the idea of a bridge camera. Personally, at this price, I couldn't just lock myself into one lens, and I think I would still rather go for an option like the APS-C Sony A6700 ($1,499 body only) with its full compatibility with all of Sony (and third-party) E-mount lenses. Paired with something like the Tamron 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD ($599) or Tamron 50-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Di III VC VXD ($1,199) would give a kind of similar (with the 1.5x APS-C crop) focal range for around the same money, but would also allow me to grow and adapt my photography with more lenses if I chose.

While they are not in the same league in terms of quality and features, if you just want maximum reach, the Nikon Coolpix P1100 is currently under $1,150 and the Lumix FZ80D/FZ82D under $500.

Design & Handling

The RX10 V has been near totally redesigned, and I really like the new direction, even if I do think Sony has not gone quite far enough. There is a clear Alpha influence, particularly around the controls, but this still has the sloped top of a bridge camera alongside that girthy lens. It looks much more modern and appealing than the RX10 IV, but I think it still does not quite have the full cool appeal of Sony’s latest mirrorless bodies.

A 24-600mm f/2.4-4 zoom lens, a built-in EVF, a proper grip, a full control layout, and a larger battery are never going to disappear into something pocketable. This is still a bulky camera. But compared with many other bridge cameras, it looks a lot trendier, and the redesign is a substantial improvement over the previous generation.

The biggest practical improvement is the control layout. Sony has moved the mode dial to a more familiar position on the right of the viewfinder, alongside dual command wheels, which makes the RX10 V feel much closer to the company’s recent Alpha cameras. The trade-off is that the top information screen from the RX10 IV is gone. I know some people love them, but I do not really mind. I have never found top screens all that useful on cameras with a good tilting rear display when you can just use the main screen for a top-down settings view.

Photo, movie, and S&Q modes are now separated using the sub dial around the mode dial, just like on recent Alpha bodies. I like this approach, as it gives each shooting mode its own menu setup.

The rear layout is also much better. There is now a joystick for selecting the focus point, which is an extremely welcome addition on a camera that is likely to be used for pinpointing birds, wildlife, insects, and other small subjects. Sony has also added an AF-ON button, which will please anyone who uses back button focusing. Alongside that, you get the familiar control wheel and rear record button. The result is a camera that feels much more in line with Sony’s modern cameras and will feel at home to anyone used to Sony’s Alpha range.

The screen has also improved. It is now a 3-inch, 3:2, 1.62m-dot display, up from the older 4:3 layout. It is sharp and bright enough to see outdoors in harsh sunlight. Sony has kept the same basic screen mechanism as the previous model, so it flips up, but it does not flip out to the side like some of Sony’s more creator-focused Alpha bodies. I think that is fine for this camera. Sony might talk about the RX10 V as a hybrid camera, but I don't really see it as a serious creator camera.

The electronic viewfinder is another welcome upgrade. It is now a 0.5-type, 3.686m-dot EVF with 60fps or 120fps refresh options, and in use, it is bright with camera settings easy to read around the edges. The EVF does protrude from the rear of the body quite noticeably, to the point where I could hold the camera by it. It doesn't look bad, but it's just a minor design quirk I noticed here more than on Sony’s thicker Alpha bodies.

Elsewhere, the RX10 V is dust- and moisture-resistant, uses Sony’s Z battery, includes micro-HDMI and USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps, and supports 4K30p live streaming.

There is no built-in flash, but external flashes can sync up to 1/2000 sec thanks to the leaf shutter. The SD card also sits in the battery compartment, which is not my favourite, but it's fine.

Because Sony has retained the same lens as the RX10 IV, the barrel’s length, diameter, and overall extension are effectively unchanged from the previous model. It is still a substantial piece of glass, and the camera takes up far more space in use than its body might suggest. That is the unavoidable trade-off for fitting a 24-600mm equivalent f/2.4-4 zoom into a single fixed-lens camera. At full zoom, the RX10 V looks and feels every bit as large as the bridge camera it is.

When off, the camera retracts the lens slightly to make the camera a little more travelable, and powering it up extends the lens a couple of centimeters to the 24mm starting position. The lens then extends a considerable distance from the body as you zoom toward 600mm, making the camera noticeably more front-heavy at the long end.

I found the zoom smooth and well controlled. You can control the zoom very precisely by turning the lens barrel, or there is a zoom rocker around the shutter button, which is a faster way to jump through the focal range. There is also a manual focus control on the lens barrel for precise focusing.

Performance

The RX10 V uses the same 20.1MP 1-inch stacked sensor as before, and the same Zeiss Vario 24-600mm f/2.4-4 lens. That might sound disappointing at first, especially after such a long gap between models, but I do not think either part desperately needed replacing. The sensor still performs well, and the lens engineering remains one of the main reasons this camera can exist.

Image quality is excellent. I was impressed by the amount of detail the RX10 V could pull out of close-ups, especially when photographing birds and insects. Fine feather detail was clearly visible, and in macro-style shots, I could see the tiny hairs on a bee. For 20MP and a 600mm equivalent zoom lens, it is a very strong performance.

Anyone worried about depth of field from a 1-inch sensor should not be too concerned either. At these kinds of focal lengths, compression does a lot. You can still get excellent subject isolation and pleasing background blur, particularly when shooting at the longer end of the zoom.

Image 1 of 13

The lens isn't the longest superzoom out there (the Nikon Coolpix P1100 has a ridiculous 24-3000mm equivalent zoom range), but having 24-600mm in a single camera means you can move from wide travel scenes to tight compositions without ever changing lenses. Optical stabilization is built in, and for stills, it performed very well; at 600mm, my photos were sharp and shake-free.

Image 1 of 2

If you need to go beyond the 600mm optical limit of the lens, Sony has a few solutions.

Sony’s Clear Image Zoom is surprisingly good. It extends reach to around 2x, and full-size images still look good. If you pixel peep, there is some loss of fine detail and clarity, and I would not want to crop those files much further, but the results are very usable.

Digital zoom extends to 4x, and while there is a clear loss of fine detail, I found it useful for getting the final framing right straight out of camera if you don’t need absolute image quality.

Finally, Zoom Assist lets you quickly zoom out to find a subject, then return to the zoomed-in range. Anyone who has tried to track a small bird or aircraft at 600mm will immediately understand why that might be useful. You can also change the zoom speed, which is helpful depending on whether you are shooting stills, video, or trying to follow a moving subject.

Image 1 of 3

Image 1 of 3

Close focusing is not always a strength of a superzoom lens, but not so here. The RX10 V can focus as close as 3cm at the wide end and 72cm at the telephoto end, with close to half-size macro magnification at the long end. You are not going to capture microscopic details, but it is particularly useful for insects. I could fill the frame more while still staying far enough away not to scare the subject off.

Image 1 of 2

The biggest upgrade that comes from the new processor is autofocus. The BIONZ XR processor and AI processing unit bring the RX10 V more up to date with Sony’s current Alpha cameras. The RX10 V can shoot at up to 30fps blackout-free with AF/AE calculations 60 times per second, while the mechanical shutter tops out at 10fps. The camera also has Sony's continuous speed boost for jumping between faster and slower bursts only when needed.

Autofocus is excellent overall. Sony has increased the AF points from 315 to 575, with 70.6% frame coverage, and there are new focus spot sizes plus custom focus sizing. Combined with the new joystick and AF-ON button, the whole focusing experience is far better than before.

I do just love how good Sony's autofocus is. It is incredibly fast, and subject recognition can be outstanding. The camera now recognizes a broader range of subjects, and there is an Auto subject recognition mode.

However, in my experience, the Auto mode was not perfect. Auto failed to pick up more birds and insects than I consider ideal; however, when I manually selected the relevant subject type, the RX10 V did a much, much better job. If you know what subject you're hunting, I would just not leave it to AI guesswork.

People, faces, and eyes were handled almost flawlessly, but I don’t really see that as the main goal of this camera. The RX10 V is most interesting as a wildlife and birding camera, and I found the AF very good, but not infallible.

Video is stronger than I expected. The RX10 V can shoot 4K60p with no crop, 4K120p with a crop, and 4K is oversampled from 5.2K; there is also Full HD up to 240p. It also includes S-Log3, S-Cinetone, LUT support, in-camera time lapses, a tally lamp, and 4K30p live streaming.

For video, there is no IBIS, but Sony combines optical stabilization with its electronic SteadyShot, and I was genuinely surprised by how well it did. Even at 600mm, handheld footage of birds and insects was usable, with only some sway. Heavier movements are not handled as gracefully, and any major body movement introduced too much shake, but slow handheld pans came out okay.

I still do not think this is a true hybrid camera in the way Sony tends to describe most of its new cameras. The non-fully articulating screen, no IBIS, and the fixed superzoom lens make it feel more like a stills-first camera, but with the right expectations, it can capture excellent footage.

Video Review

Verdict

A fixed-lens bridge camera with a 1-inch sensor is not the trendiest concept in 2026, but if the bridge camera market is to be revived, then the Sony RX10 V is exactly the sort of camera to do that. With a 24-600mm f/2.4-4 lens with fast autofocus, strong stabilization, 30fps shooting, and improved 4K video, it remains a very compelling proposition.

Pricing though might well be the sticking point. This is an expensive camera to be locked into just using one lens. That lens is an incredibly good, and incredibly useful do-all superzoom, but if at any point you think you might just want to slap a f/1.8 fifty-fifty on the front, then this is not for you. I think I'd still rather go for the freedom of a mirrorless camera and superzoom lens, even if it was a bit bulkier or at the cost of worse handling. If focal range is your one priority, there are much, much cheaper bridge cameras that'll give you more of that.

However, there isn’t much else I can find to moan about. I would have loved something that looked more like an A7 V with a fixed superzoom attached, but still, Sony has produced the best-looking bridge camera yet. Auto mode autofocus is a little unreliable, but single subject recognition is outstanding. And while video is much better than expected, I also do not think the RX10 V is a serious hybrid creator camera. However, as a wildlife, travel, sports, aviation, and general outdoor camera, the RX10 V is the best bridge camera I have ever used.

Alternatives

Sony RX10 IV

The obvious alternative is the Sony RX10 IV on the second-hand market. It has the same core 24-600mm lens and sensor combo and remains a very capable all-in-one superzoom camera, but it misses the RX10 V’s newer processor, AI subject recognition, improved controls, upgraded screen, better EVF and stronger video feature set.

Nikon Coolpix P1100

For buyers who simply want the most reach possible, the Nikon Coolpix P1100 is the more extreme option with 24-3000mm equivalent. It offers an enormous zoom range and will appeal to photographers who prioritize distance above all else. The Sony RX10 V is the more polished all-round camera, with a larger 1-inch sensor, faster performance, and a brighter lens, but the Nikon goes much, much longer.