Sony A6000 Performance

Generally excellent performance, though startup is sluggish.

The Sony A6000's startup time (power on to first shot) was slower than most CSCs, and much slower than most DSLRs. Switching from Play to Record mode and taking a shot was pretty fast, though.

The Sony A6000's full-autofocus shutter lag (with the subject at a fixed distance) was only about 0.15 second in both Single-area (Center) and Multi-area (Wide) AF modes with the 16-50mm kit lens at a medium focal length. That's significantly faster than the NEX-6 (~0.26s) and even faster than most DSLRs, though not as fast as Sony's 0.06 second claim. We may look into AF performance a bit more to see if we can verify Sony's claim in a separate article, but the above results conform to how we test all our cameras.

Enabling the flash added significant delay for preflash metering, increasing lag to about 0.42s. When manually focused, the Sony A6000's shutter lag was about 0.14s, which is pretty good, though not as fast as some competitors. The A6000's prefocused shutter lag was only 22 milliseconds, much faster than most CSCs and faster than any DSLR -- we have the camera's lack of a mirror and electronic front curtain shutter (enabled by default) to thank for that.

To minimize the effect of different lens' focusing speed, we test AF-active shutter lag with the lens already set to the correct focal distance.

Single-shot cycle times were very good for a mirrorless ILC camera, at 0.51 second for large/fine JPEGs, 0.48 second for RAW files and oddly 0.44 second for RAW+JPEG frames.

Continuous Hi burst mode performance was excellent, at just over 11 frames per second regardless of file type, easily meeting Sony's 11 fps specification. And thanks to the A6000's Hybrid AF, continuous AF is available at this speed, though don't expect focus to track as well as a pro DSLR at that rate! There are also Mid (6 fps) and Lo (2.5 fps) settings, however we did not test those options.

Buffer depth for large/fine JPEGs in Continuous Hi mode was also excellent, at 47 frames before the camera slowed. Note that our test target for this was designed to be difficult to compress, so burst lengths should be longer with typical subjects. When shooting RAW files, buffer depth dropped to 22 frames, and to 21 frames with RAW+L/F JPEG files, which is still pretty generous. Buffer clearing after max-length bursts took some time even with a fast card, though, ranging between 14 seconds after a max-length burst of RAW files, to 22 seconds after a burst of large/fine JPEGs.

The built-in flash was able to recycle from a full discharge in 2.3 seconds on average, which is fast.

Download speeds were very good, fast enough that you likely won't feel the need for a separate card reader, even with large memory cards. (Note that this test was performed with a SanDisk Pro 95MB/sec UHS-I SDHC card: Slower cards would likely show slower transfer times.)

Bottom line, the Sony A6000's performance was generally excellent in our tests, with blazing fast AF speeds, extremely quick prefocused shutter lag and a very fast burst mode that supports continuous autofocus. Startup time was sluggish, though, and while buffer depths were quite good, clearing after a max-length burst of 24-megapixel images can take some time even with a fast SD card.

Battery Life
Good battery life with the LCD for a Compact System Camera, though using the EVF reduces battery life.

The Sony A6000 uses a custom NP-FW50 rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with both a single battery and an AC adapter for charging in-camera via USB. Battery life is rated for 310 shots per charge when using the EVF, which is a bit low, especially when compared to DSLRs with optical viewfinders. Battery life when using the LCD is slightly above average for a mirrorless camera, though, at 360 shots. As is usually the case, we recommend getting a second battery for your A6000 if you plan any extended outings.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery), based on CIPA battery-life and/or manufacturer standard test conditions.

(Interested readers can find an English translation of the CIPA DC-002 standards document here. (180K PDF document))