Introduction

Ease of Use

With its large screen, theSony Xperia Z2 only just about fits in a trouser pocket. On the plus side it is fairly thin so the overall weight of the device doesn’t feel too bad. The phone is waterproof and dustproof, making it both useful for dealing with rainy weather and also means you can use it underwater.

As with most smartphones there’s not too much in the way of buttons to be found on the Z2. There’s an on/off button, a rocker switch which can be used for the digital zoom, and a button which you can use to fire off the camera’s shutter release. If you prefer, you can use a touchscreen version of the shutter release button from within the camera app.

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2

The large size of the Sony Xperia Z2 means it’s fairly unwieldy to use when photographing one handed, or when using it in landscape format. The lens is also perilously close to the edge of the device making it easy to accidentally obscure it with your finger. It’s likely that you’d get used to holding and using the phone with time though.

On the plus side, the touchscreen is nice and responsive and once you’ve become accustomed to the different options available via the camera app, it’s easy to tap and swipe your way through those that are available.

Rear of the Sony Xperia Z2 / Image Displayed

Getting to the camera app is easy from the home screen making it almost as quick to boot up as a compact camera. There a few different shooting modes available, but by default the camera shoots in Super Intelligent Auto. To change between the different shooting modes, tap the icon in the bottom right hand corner of the screen. There’s a manual control mode, which is actually a bit of a misnomer as it’s more akin to a Program Auto mode - you can change the white balance, sensitivity and metering, but not the aperture or shutter speed.

In order to make these changes, you’ll need to tap an icon on the left hand side of the native camera app. There’s one which allows you to change white balance and exposure compensation, while other settings are found in the more extensive menu reached by tapping the three dot icon. This makes it a little bit fiddly if you want to quickly change between different settings, such as changing from one ISO value to another - you can leave it on ISO Auto though.

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2 / Camera App

Also while in Manual mode, you can change through different scene modes. For instance, there’s landscape and night scene mode available. Another interesting mode is Background Defocus - this promises to deliver “DSLR like” images. This gives you the option to photograph and object and set the amount of background blur to give a shallow depth of field effect. Use the slider on the screen to control how much blur you want to add - too much can look a little unrealistic, and doesn’t work as well when the outline of the object contains lots of fine detail - such as hair.

Timeshift burst is a pretty innovative feature which allows you to choose the best photo from a sequence taken in quick succession - which is useful if photographing action, such as a sports day.

Sony’s Sweep Panorama mode, which is found in lots of compact cameras, is also available on the Xperia Z2. All you need to do, once in this shooting mode, is hold down the shutter release key and move the phone across a scene - it will automatically capture and stitch the required images. Also something which we’ve seen in compacts and the like is Sony’s HDR function - this is useful when shooting difficult lighting conditions to even out the exposure for better balance.

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2

As with the previous model, face recognition and smile shutter are included. Face recognition will give settings bias to any faces the camera detects in the scene, setting the exposure and white balance based on the face for instance. Meanwhile, smile shutter will trigger off the shutter release when it detects a smile - this works fairly well, but it’s not foolproof - it’s useful when composing group shots or selfies though.

Once you’ve pressed the shutter release (either physical or touchscreen), the Sony Xperia Z2's screen will blank out for a brief second and the image will be visible in a small preview window at the bottom of the screen. You can tap this to view all of the images you’ve taken - simply swipe through to move through those stored in the memory.

Memory Card Slot

In order to set the focus point, you simply tap the area on screen you wish to focus on. In good light, the AF is pretty snappy, but fairly often, the camera will struggle to focus - but it will still let you take a picture - you may therefore find that you’re taking some out of focus shots - this is especially true for close-up shots. To get a better lock on focus, half press the physical camera key before holding it down fully to take the shot. While there’s a macro mode in Superior Auto, you can’t switch it on yourself - it will automatically activate when you get close to a subject.

Video recording is available in variety of frame rates, and you can also record in 4K format. In reality, you’ll often find that the unit stops recording as it heats up too quickly, so it’s unlikely you’ll be able to create very long 4K clips - it’s interesting to see the technology available on a consumer smartphone though.

If you want to add some different digital filter style effects, you’ll find these in the mode menu - tap the bottom right hand corner of the screen and choose Creative effect. You can use these effects in both video and stills, and there’s quite a few to choose from - such as partial colour, nostalgic, old film and some more wacky options such as kaleidoscope. Of course you can also download hundreds of different photography apps from the Google Play store - such as Instagram - which also give you lots of image editing possibilities.

Image Quality

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

Sony has put the same sensor in the Xperia Z2 as you can find in many compact cameras. Sony has been producing impressive sensors for some time now, so it comes as no surprise that the Z2 puts in a pretty good performance when it comes to image quality - putting it on a par with a similarly specced compact camera (in almost every area except zoom and flash).

Colours have a nice level of saturation directly from the camera, while detail is also resolved pretty well. You’ll want to avoid using high sensitivities if you can though - at ISO 1600 and ISO 3200, there’s so much noise as to make an image more or less unusable at all but the smallest of sharing sizes.

While there’s an inbuilt flash on the Sony Xperia Z2, results when using it can be a little hit and miss. While it provides a useful level of light, it can also result in red-eye when photographing people - so unless you’re willing to remove that in post-production, you might be disappointed with the results.

On the plus side, the Sony G lens is capable of stopping down to f/2.0, so you might find you don’t need to use the flash all that often anyway - the Z2’s camera fares pretty well in low light thanks to this lens and you’ll find yourself with more natural results if you stay flash free.

Automatic white balance fares reasonably well, but if the camera is faced with strong artificial lights, you will see an orange-yellowish tone. When shooting in manual mode, you can set a specific white balance setting which is useful in these situations.

Occasionally the Sony Xperia Z2’s all-purpose metering mode can struggle when photographing high contrast scenes - this can be helped out when shooting in manual mode by changing the metering setting, or by using the HDR shooting mode.

Although there is a digital zoom available, images taken at the far reach of the digital zoom’s capability suffer from a reasonably severe loss of detail, so it’s best avoided unless you’re really desperate.

There’s a range of digital filters available, which are fun to experiment with if you don’t want to step out of the native camera app and install further apps. Sweep Panorama mode is also good fun, but if you examine at 100% or want to share the image with a large file size you may be disappointed with the amount of detail resolved.

Noise

There are 7 ISO settings available on the Sony Xperia Z2. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for each ISO setting.

ISO 64 (100% Crop)	ISO 100 (100% Crop)
ISO 200 (100% Crop)	ISO 400 (100% Crop)
ISO 800 (100% Crop)	ISO 1600 (100% Crop)
ISO 3200 (100% Crop)

Focal Length

The Sony Xperia Z2's fixed lens offers a wide-angle focal length of 27mm in 35mm camera terms, as illustrated by this example:

27mm	81mm (3x clear zoom)

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 sharp enough and don't really benefit from further sharpening in a program like Adobe Photoshop.

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

Chromatic Aberrations

The Sony Xperia Z2 handled chromatic aberrations well during the review, with a little purple fringing present around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations, as shown in the examples below.

Chromatic Aberrations 1 (100% Crop)	Chromatic Aberrations 2 (100% Crop)

Macro

The Sony Xperia Z2 has a close-focus distance of 8cms. 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 Xperia Z2 are Auto, Fill Flash, Red-eye Reduction and Off. As you can see, both the fill-flash and red-eye reduction modes suffered from obvious red-eye.

Flash On	Flash On (100% Crop)
Flash Redeye Reduction	Flash Redeye Reduction (100% Crop)

Picture Effects

The Sony Xperia Z2 offers an extensive range of creative Picture Effects.

Brightness Contrast	Clean
Colour Sketch	Comic
Fisheye	Harris Shutter
Hue Saturation	Kaleidoscope
Miniature	Mirror
Mosaic	Motion Effects
Motion Trail	Nostalgic
Old Film	Partial Colour
Pencil Sketch	Tint
Vivid

Sweep Panorama

The Sony Xperia Z2 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.

Sample Images

This is a selection of sample images from the Sony Xperia Z2 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 Movie & Video

Product Images

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2

Rear of the Sony Xperia Z2

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2 / Image Displayed

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2 / Turned On

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2 / Main Menu

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2 / White Balance

Side of the Sony Xperia Z2

Side of the Sony Xperia Z2

Side of the Sony Xperia Z2

Top of the Sony Xperia Z2

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2

Front of the Sony Xperia Z2

Memory Card Slot

Conclusion

Overall, the Sony Xperia Z2’s camera is very capable for a mobile phone camera with some obvious limitations. Although it is billed as having a compact like camera on board thanks to the larger than average (for a phone) sensor and Sony G lens, it’s pretty safe to say that dedicated cameras can still outshine the performance of the Z2.

If you’re photographing in good light then the Sony Xperia Z2 is great and you’ll be very pleased with the images it produces. Colours are warm and vibrant while there’s plenty of detail on display. There’s lots of fun elements about the camera, including digital filters, sweep panorama and the gimmicky but cute artificial reality feature.

However, if you want to use it a serious camera to replace your compact camera, you might be a little disappointed. With only a digital zoom - that’s not particularly impressive at the telephoto end and a flash which leaves subjects with red-eye, don’t rush out to bin your compact just yet.

Moving on to the video features, it’s pretty exciting to see 4K video recording in a consumer smartphone, but the fact that the device overheats if you try to use it for any length of time makes it a little less than perfect in practice. This also happens sometimes when using the artificial reality feature too, suggesting that the Sony Xperia Z2 has some processing issues.

One of the best things about this phone is that it’s waterproof making it ideal for lots of shooting scenarios that perhaps your compact camera can’t deal with - it’s the kind of credentials that also make it good as a family camera, you can be confident of letting your kids loose with it without worrying about damage.

Of course one of the other fantastic features is the hundreds of apps available from the Google Play store - with such a wide variety to choose from, you can make the Sony Xperia Z2 work in the best way for you.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	3.5
Value for money	3.5

Main Rivals

Listed below are some of the rivals of the Sony Xperia Z2.

Review Roundup

Reviews of the Sony Xperia Z2 from around the web.

Specifications

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