Sony RX100 Performance

Generally good to excellent performance in our tests.

Startup time was much slower than an SLR, but reasonable for a point & shoot. Buffer clearing times were pretty good for its class, especially considering the buffer depth and its 20 megapixel images. (Particularly impressive was the ~2 second clearing time for RAW images with a sufficiently fast memory card. RAW shooters rejoice!)

Mode switching performance was pretty good for its class, though Record to Play was a bit sluggish.

Looking at the Sony RX100's ability to determine that it's properly focused when shooting the same target multiple times, its autofocus speed is very fast for it class. The Sony RX100's full-autofocus shutter lag (with the subject at a fixed distance) was only 0.153 second in Single-area AF mode. This increased slightly to 0.266 second in Multi-area AF mode. That's much faster than the average CSC, and competitive with many SLRs.

The one significant anomaly we found in our shutter lag tests was that the AF is very slow to lock on in continuous AF mode when the lens is set to its widest aperture: We measured very consistent lag times of ~1.2 seconds in that condition. Stopping down to f/4 reduced continuous-AF lag to the 0.314 second shown in the table above.

With the flash enabled, the RX100's full AF shutter lag increased to 0.403s, to account for the preflash metering. Shutter lag was 0.315 second in continuous mode AF. When manually focused, the Sony RX100's lag time dropped to 0.032 second, which is very fast. The Sony RX100's prefocused lag time was only 0.013 second, among the fastest we've seen in cameras we've tested.

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 time was quite good with just large/fine JPEGs, at 0.36 second, increasing to just 0.66 second when shooting RAW and 0.62 second for RAW + large/fine JPEG files. (As noted above, the difference between RAW and RAW+JPEG is within the margin of error.) Standard continuous mode performance was about average at 2.5 frames/second for JPEG and 2.22 frames/second for RAW and RAW+JPEG. Speed Priority Continuous mode was outstanding at 10 frames per second, though autofocus and exposure are fixed at the first frame of a burst in that mode.

Buffer depth for large/fine JPEGs was excellent, at 33 frames in standard continuous mode. Note, though, that our test target for this is designed to be difficult to compress, so users can expect longer JPEG burst lengths with typical subjects. When shooting with RAW files, buffer depth dropped to 16 RAW frames or 10 RAW+L/F JPEG frames, both still pretty good. Buffer depth in Speed Priority Continuous mode was 13 large/fine JPEG or RAW frames in our tests, and 9 JPEG+RAW frames, but as mentioned, you should do better with typical subjects.

Flash recycling was a significant shortcoming of the RX100, at 7.2 seconds from a full discharge. While not at all uncommon in small-body cameras with reasonable flash ranges, this is still a significant step down from what enthusiasts are accustomed to with either high-end (and bulky) point & shoots or interchangeable-lens cameras.

Download speeds were relatively fast, quick enough that you won't feel the need for a separate card reader, even with large memory cards. (Note that this test was performed with a SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s SD card: Slower cards would likely show slower transfer times.)

Bottom line, the Sony RX100's performance was really excellent for a high-resolution point & shoot. Autofocus is on par with even fast SLRs, prefocused shutter lag is very much in the top tier regardless of camera type, and Speed Priority burst mode was faster than most professional SLRs (though the RX100 won't track focus or adjust exposure in that mode). While not quite as dramatic as Speed Priority burst mode, single-shot cycle times were very good as well. Buffer depth was very good in all modes, especially considering the 20 megapixel resolution of the RX100. The two disappointments were the rather slow flash recycling and very slow AF when using continuous AF mode with the lens a the maximum f/1.8 aperture.

Battery Life
Good battery life for a compact camera.

The Sony RX100 uses a custom rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack for power, and comes with a single battery and AC adapter (charging is in-camera via USB). The battery is rated for 330 shots per charge using the CIPA standard, which includes 50% flash shots. Battery life is above average for a compact model, but we do recommend getting a second battery for your RX100 if you plan any extended outings or shoot a lot of video.

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))