Sony Xperia 1 VI "Review" 3 Months Later - Is This Goodbye?
...for now.
Here we go then. My review of the Sony Xperia 1 Mk VI. This is going to be a difficult one. I know there’s plenty of Sony fans still out there who love Xperia and who will disagree with some of the remarks I’m about to make, but I think Sony has forgotten what it has been building with the Xperia line for the last five or so years. And honestly I think it’s time for me to move on from the brand.
It’s not all bad though. In fact the majority of this phone is quite positive, which I know sounds quite contradictory to what I just said in my opening statement… How about we start with what’s great and then we’ll get to the not so great a little later on.
So the thing I loved about Xperia and what drew me to the brand back with the Xperia 5 II was that it wasn’t conforming to what other brands had determined to be the correct approach to making a smartphone. It had a much narrower screen with no holes in it, a headphone jack, micro SD support and a pro camera set-up. I love things that are different. It’s why I gravitated to Windows Phone back in the day. Sony had a unique approach and intended to build on it, no matter what the critics would say.
What I really liked as well was that Sony’s approach to smartphone photography was to provide less processing alongside that beautiful Sony colour science. Sure this wasn’t great for most people with it behaving more like an actual camera, but it wasn’t intended to be for those people. It was built for enthusiasts and content creators and it did those things VERY well indeed.
Each generation of Xperia had its issues too, especially the Mk III and IV series due to the Samsung manufactured Snapdragon SoC’s powering them, but with the Mk V series Sony made one of my all-time favourite phones. For the Mk VI they just needed to improve in a few more areas and it would have been outstanding. And improve on some things they did. The flashlight is actually useable now, there’s an improved auto mode with more computational photography stuff and the battery life…the battery life is out of this world. That’s all thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 coupled with the energy efficient screen.
I still love using this phone for video. When used with Sony’s Vlog monitor, Bluetooth Grip and a wireless mic kit like the DJI Mic 2 I love to use it’s an extremely potent combo for content creation. But we have no Videography Pro or Cinematography Pro app this year…why is that? Surely these are the tools that you would expect a Sony Xperia to have?
Unfortunately Sony suddenly decided it needed to try and appeal to everyone. The approach of appealing to enthusiasts and content creators is no longer. This results in a simplifying of what was the best camera app out there and a gutting of the video modes and features. This is alongside it moving away from the 21:9 4K display on the Xperia 1 devices. That Videography Pro app which was my favourite app for video by a long LONG way is going to reappear in some form as part of the new camera app. This will happen once the Android 15 update arrives. Kind of astounding to not have this there at launch.
Now the bigger issue for me isn’t in the software itself. I will be happy enough if they do add many of those features back in. What Sony can’t change on the Xperia 1 VI is the camera hardware. I really expected upgrades this year. The Mk. VI really needed those upgrades, especially at the asking price of £1300. We effectively have the same telephoto sensor we’ve had for two years previous already. Sure there’s added functionality with the extremely finnicky tele macro mode, but the overall quality is poor. The main sensor and ultrawide are both the same as last year.
Photo samples time to show you how poor the telephoto is compared to the Pixel 6 Pro. Yes not the Pixel 8 Pro that I also have, the Pixel 6 Pro. A three year old device. We can match up the zoom a little better with this and it will highlight just how far behind the Xperia is in this respect.
The main sensor is perfectly fine and offers plenty of detail. The 2x crop is quite good too. Xperia still has an issue with HDR though and this has been a major bugbear. For this..and I can’t believe I’m doing this, we’re going to compare the Xperia 1 VI to…the CMF Phone 1. Just one photo to show this is all that’s needed. You can clearly see the areas where the blue sky should be are totally blown out on the Xperia. The CMF Phone manages it just fine. That’s a £200 phone doing what a £1300 phone seemingly can’t.
Now it’s fine if you shoot RAW as you can recover that just fine. However, Sony with the changes I mentioned earlier is seemingly trying to move away from being a device for the enthusiast users to appeal to casuals. In which case it’s even more unacceptable. This is only going to result in them destroying the Xperia brand altogether. Moving to appeal to casuals is no longer possible especially if you can’t cover the basics they want. And turning off the enthusiast users such as myself leaves it with little to no consumers interested in buying its products. That means the death of the Xperia brand and this is something I desperately do not want to see.
However for these reasons it’s time for me to say goodbye to Xperia. For now at least. As much as I really enjoy using the Xperia 1 VI I can’t justify holding onto it if the camera features I want aren’t there. I will instead get a Mk. V model and hold on to the hope that Sony reverses this and gets back to providing us with the best possible production tools in the mobile space.