Introduction

Ease of Use

To look at the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV and compare it with the Mark III, you’ll be hard pushed to find much of a difference. Sony has stuck with a sleek and small design here which should easily fit into most pockets, and certainly into your bag with ease. There’s not much in the way of grip on the front of the camera, but perhaps thanks to its reasonable weight, it still feels fairly safe in the hands - attaching a wrist strap can be of benefit though if you’re worried.

The electronic viewfinder is hidden away inside the camera, which helps the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV keep its slick appearance when you don’t want to use it. On the side of the camera you’ll find a switch for popping up the viewfinder. Once you’ve done this, you’ll need to pull the back of it away from itself, otherwise the image inside the viewfinder will be blurry. Performing this action of popping up the viewfinder switches on the camera automatically, and placing it back inside its housing will switch off the camera. This is a function you can switch off if you prefer, but it makes for quite a quick start up process. Alternatively, there’s an on/off button on the top of the camera. It would be nice if the whole process of using the viewfinder was fully automatic, but Sony’s engineers don’t seem to have found a way to do that just yet.

Front of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

A sensor on the viewfinder itself makes for a seamless transition between using the screen on the finder - it will switch on as you bring it up to your eye. The viewfinder isn’t as large as something you’ll find on a DSLR or CSC, while there’s no eyecup to block out the distracting scene in front of you. That said, the increase in resolution makes it much more usable than its predecessor, and if you’re a fan of viewfinders you’ll be pleased to see it here.

Around the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV's lens is a customisable control ring. By default it will control different parameters depending on the shooting mode you’re in. So, for instance, in aperture priority, twisting it will alter aperture. However, you can change it to something else if you prefer - such as ISO, Creative Style, White Balance or Exposure Compensation. A small custom button on the back of the camera can also be assigned to a number of different functions including all of those just mentioned and more.

A mode dial can be found on top of the RX100 IV. Here you’ll find a variety of modes including manual, aperture priority, shutter priority and automatic modes. There’s also a handy space for a group of custom settings should you find yourself wanting to shoot a particular type of scene with frequency. A new addition here is HFR, or high frame rate, which is what you need to turn to when you want to capture super slow motion videos.

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV’s screen is tiltable. It’s not fully articulated which isn’t quite so handy for awkwardly positioned portrait shots, but you can point it all the way forwards for taking selfies. Should you put it in this position, selfie mode will be activated, switching on face detection and a self-timer. If you have the viewfinder raised, you’ll need to get rid of it to see all of the screen… which of course turns the camera off and you’ll need to switch it back on.

Sadly, this screen is not touch sensitive as this would make setting the autofocus point much easier. If you have Flexible Spot AF mode selected, it’s not a complicated process to set the AF point - you simply press the central button of the navigation pad, and then use the scrolling dial or directional keys to choose the point you want. However, if you’re travelling from one side of the scene to the other, it can feel like a long time to be faffing about with AF points when a simple tap of a screen would get the job done almost instantly.

Speaking of these navigational keys, these keys can be customised to different functions as well. The down key accesses exposure compensation by default though, while the right key is for flash modes, and the left for self-timer and drive modes. The up key changes the way the display looks. Pressing the display key switches on the RX100 IV’s inbuilt level, which is useful when shooting landscapes and you want to get the horizon straight. You can also see the level in the viewfinder if you wish.

Tilting LCD Screen

Wi-Fi and NFC is very quick and easy to use with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV and once you’ve set it up once for Wi-Fi with the password, that process becomes even quicker. You can send across individual or sets of photos for sharing across social networks. To control the camera remotely, you use one of the PlayMemories apps under the main menu, and you’ve got a good range of different controls here (including aperture, ISO, exposure compensation and so on), which is nice to see and makes it actually genuinely useful.

The menu button accesses the camera’s main menu, and here there’s a little bit of an overwhelming amount of options to navigate through - so it can be worth sitting down with the camera and the instruction manual to really get to grips with everything the RX100 IV has to offer. A quick menu can be accessed by pressing the function (Fn) button. This menu is customisable which is good for only including the settings you tend to change most often.

In order to use some of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV’s functions, such as Picture Effects, you’ll need to switch to JPEG only shooting. It’s a bit of a faff having to switch this on and off, so it would be nice if Sony could make it possible to shoot more in raw format - or come up with an automated on/off process for file quality if that’s not possible.

Pop-up Viewfinder

The introduction of the new sensor design does indeed seem to translate into a very quick shooting experience. Moving through the menus and so on is speedy, while autofocus speeds are very snappy. If the light drops, the lens will hunt a little more to acquire focus, but a false positive being presented is very rare.

There’s no supplied separate battery charger with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV meaning you have to charge it in body. On the one hand, this can be handy when you don’t have access to a spare plug socket as you can charge it directly from a computer, but it also means that you can’t be charging one battery while using another. As something which appeals to travelling photographers, this seems a bit of an oversight, and it may be worth investing in a second battery and charger if you’re planning to use it extensively on your travels as the quoted battery life may not last a full day.

Image Quality

All of the sample images in this review were taken using the 20 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around 6Mb.

As usual for the RX100 range, Sony has created something which is capable of producing some stunning images, and it’s fair to say that the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV is the best to date. A satisfying amount of punch and vibrance can be seen in JPEG images, while the ability to use different Creative Styles gives you some good options for different types of scene. Detail is well reproduced throughout the sensitivity range and you can get usable images all the way up to ISO 6400. It’s even true to say that ISO 12800 is pretty impressive, too, if you don’t mind a bit of noise in your images.

Automatic white balance performs well under a range of different lighting conditions, including artificial lighting. As usual, a variety of more specific white balance options are available should you need them. Leaving the camera on multi-purpose metering usually results in good exposures most of the time, and the RX100 IV is not easily fooled by high contrast situations. You can use the DRO Optimiser too to help balance out images, but be careful of using at its highest (Level 5) setting as it tends to create slightly HDR like images.

Both 4K and 1080p HD video recording results in good quality images, while the slow motion video is fun to experiment with. It’s worth noting that if you use the 1000fps setting though, quality is reduced and you won’t be able to use the video at a large size.

Noise

There are 9 ISO settings available on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting for both JPEG and Raw formats.

JPEG	Raw
ISO 80 (100% Crop)	ISO 80 (100% Crop)
ISO 100 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 200 (100% Crop)
ISO 400 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 800 (100% Crop)
ISO 1600 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)	ISO 3200 (100% Crop)
ISO 6400 (100% Crop)	ISO 6400 (100% Crop)
ISO 12800 (100% Crop)	ISO 12800 (100% Crop)

Focal Range

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV's 3x zoom lens offers a fairly versatile focal range, as illustrated by these examples:

24mm	70mm

Sharpening

Here are two 100% crops which have been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the camera images are just a little soft and ideally benefit from some further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop. Alternatively you can change the in-camera sharpening level.

Original (100% Crop)	Sharpened (100% Crop)

File Quality

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV has 3 different image quality settings available, with Extra Fine being the highest quality option. Here are some 100% crops which show the quality of the various options, with the file size shown in brackets.

Extra Fine (8.32Mb) (100% Crop)	Fine (3.98Mb) (100% Crop)
Standard (2.54Mb) (100% Crop)	RAW (19.7Mb) (100% Crop)

Macro

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV allows you to focus on a subject that is 5cms away from the camera when the lens is set to wide-angle. The first image shows how close you can get to the subject (in this case a compact flash card). The second image is a 100% crop.

Macro	Macro (100% Crop)

Flash

The flash settings on the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV are Auto, Forced Flash, Slow Syncro, No Flash, with a Red-eye Reduction option in the Main menu. These shots of a white coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.

Suppressed Flash - Wide Angle (24mm)	Forced Flash - Wide Angle (24mm)
Suppressed Flash - Telephoto (70mm)	Forced Flash - Telephoto (70mm)

And here are some portrait shots. As you can see, neither the Forced Flash setting or the Red-Eye Correction option caused any amount of red-eye.

Forced Flash	Forced Flash (100% Crop)
Red-eye Reduction	Red-eye Reduction (100% Crop)

Night

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV's maximum shutter speed is 30 seconds in the Manual mode, which is great news if you're seriously interested in night photography. The shot below was taken using a shutter speed of 30 seconds at ISO 100.

Night	Night (100% Crop)

Dynamic Range Optimizer

D-Range Optimiser (DRO) is Sony's solution to improve shadow detail in photos taken in contrasty light.

Off	LV1
LV2	LV3
LV4	LV5

Picture Effects

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV offers an extensive range of thirteen creative Picture Effects.

Off	Toy Camera
Pop Color	Posterization
Retro	Soft High-key
Partial Color (Green	High Contrast Mono
Soft Focus	HDR Painting
Rich-tone Mono	Miniature
Watercolor	Illustration

Sweep Panorama

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV allows you to take panoramic images very easily, by 'sweeping' with the camera while keeping the shutter release depressed. The camera does all the processing and stitching and even successfully compensates for moving subjects.

Standard

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV camera, which were all taken using the 20 megapixel Fine JPEG setting. The thumbnails below link to the full-sized versions, which have not been altered in any way.

Sample RAW Images

The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV enables users to capture RAW and JPEG format files. We've provided some Sony RAW (ARW) samples for you to download (thumbnail images shown below are not 100% representative).

Sample Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Front of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Lens Extended

Front of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Flash Raised

Side of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Side of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Image Displayed

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Function Menu

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Creative Style Menu

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Main Menu

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Main Menu

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Turned On

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Tilting LCD Screen

Rear of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV / Viewfinder

Top of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Bottom of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Side of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Side of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Front of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Front of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV

Memory Card Slot / Battery Compartment

Conclusion

Sony has made some good improvements to what is already an excellently performing camera, but there are still a few small problems with the RX100 IV which make it just slightly less than perfect. Even if you can put the extremely high price aside (especially as that will drop as time goes on), it remains disappointing not to see a touch sensitive screen on a Sony RX100 - if for no other reason than setting the AF point would be much easier and quicker with one. It’s also frustrating that you have to switch off raw format shooting to make full use of some of the functions on offer here, too.

On the plus side, the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV’s viewfinder is a good improvement on its predecessor, making it much more likely to be used often, and not just when super bright light prevents you from working with the screen. As before, the RX100 IV’s lens is great. Although 24-70mm isn’t much for a compact camera, it has served many DSLR users well throughout the years and represents a classic focal length. The maximum apertures of f/1.8 - f/2.8 allow you to get creative with shallow depth of field effects and are also useful when shooting in lower light conditions.

Hopefully the asking price of the RX100 IV will drop fairly quickly. At the moment it represents quite a big investment - but on the other hand that means there are some good deals to be had on its predecessors, all of which are still great cameras. The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV makes for a very appealing back-up camera for everybody who craves high quality images even when they don’t have the ability or inclination to carry around heavy and cumbersome kit. It performs well in all areas, with excellent images in a variety of different shooting conditions. The fact that you can slip it into your pocket to carry with you at all times is likely to have a positive impact on your photography too.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4.5
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4.5
Image quality	5
Value for money	3

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Listed below are some of the rivals of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100 IV from around the web.

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