Sony RX100 VII Performance

Excellent overall performance, but buffer clearing is slow.

Startup to first shot time was close to average for a compact camera, and switching from Play to Record and taking a shot was just a bit faster.

The Sony RX100 VII's full autofocus shutter lag when shooting the same target multiple times was very fast for a compact camera. The RX100 VII's full AF-S shutter lag clocked in at 0.119 second at wide angle using center AF mode. Full AF-S shutter lag was only slightly slower at full telephoto, at about 0.120 second, but that's still very fast. Enabling the flash raised shutter lag to 0.174 seconds, to account for the metering preflash.

Manual focus shutter lag was incredibly fast at 30 milliseconds, and prefocused shutter lag was only 9 milliseconds, one of the fastest lags we've ever measured.

We also tested lag times in electronic shutter mode but as you can see above, they were slower than with the mechanical shutter, as they usually are.

Shot-to-shot cycle times were excellent in single shot mode, at about 0.4 second for Large/Extra Fine JPEGs or 0.5 second for RAW + Large/Extra Fine JPEG files.

The RX100 VII's Continuous Hi shooting mode burst rate was excellent at 20 fps regardless of file type, and the Mark VII supports continuous AF and AE at those speeds. Note that to attain that speed, the electronic shutter is used. This is a little slower than the Mark V and VI's 24 fps, but real-time tracking and eye AF are supported at this speed, and there is no viewfinder blackout between frames. The RX100 VII also offers Mid and Lo settings rated at 10.0 and 5.0 fps respectively, but we did not test those modes in the lab. The Mark VII's new Single Burst Hi mode captured 7 frames with fixed AF/AE at a blistering 90 fps as advertised. There are also 60 and 30 fps modes.

Buffer depths weren't as deep as the Mark VI's and more similar to the Mark V's, coming in at 169 best quality JPEGs, 77 RAW or 77 RAW+JPEG files before the camera slowed down from 20 fps in our tests. Buffer clearing was still quite slow, though, taking 59 seconds after a max-length burst of best quality JPEGs, 51 seconds for a max burst of RAW files, and 96 seconds for a max burst of RAW+JPEG files with our fast Sony 64GB SF-G UHS-II SDXC card. You can however make setting changes and review just-shot images while the buffer is clearing, though.

The built-in flash took an average of 6.6 seconds to recharge after a full-power discharge, which is rather slow.

Bottom line, the Sony RX100 VII's performance was excellent in most respects: Autofocus is very fast, shutter lag is extremely low, burst speeds go up to an incredible 90 fps (but with a shallow buffer of 7 frames), and buffer depths at 20 fps were generous even when shooting RAW files. The only real letdowns performance-wise continue to be slow buffer clearing with no UHS-II support, and slow flash recycling.

Battery Life
Mediocre battery life.

The Sony RX100 VII uses a custom NP-BX1 rechargeable lithium-ion battery for power, and the battery is charged in-camera via the USB port. CIPA battery life is rated about 20 shots higher than the RX100 VI's at 260 shots per charge when using the LCD monitor and 240 shots when using the electronic viewfinder, but that's still a bit below average. We strongly recommend you pick up a spare battery for extended outings.

The table above shows the number of shots the camera is capable of (on a fully-charged rechargeable battery as appropriate), 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))