Save $900 on Sony’s Best Mirrorless Camera With This Early Black Friday Deal (2025)
It’s too early for the lame turkey and family jokes that always start posts about Black Friday deals, so I’ll cut to the chase. Sony’s premium mirrorless camera, the A7R V, is on sale for the lowest price we’ve ever seen. If you’re considering an upgrade, now is the time to buy.
The A7R V isn’t our top choice mirrorless camera, but that’s mainly because at full price it’s expensive compared to the rest of the market. At this price, however, it’s a bargain, and while there isn’t really a best camera for everyone, the A7R V is unquestionably the highest resolution camera you can buy. And I know, megapixels aren’t everything, but I never took a photo with this camera and thought, damn, that was just too many megapixels.
Courtesy of Sony
The A7R V’s massive 61-megapixel full-frame sensor is the largest sensor you can get without upgrading to a larger, bulkier medium format camera. If you want to go completely crazy, get this, landscape photographers: the A7R V can combine 16 shots into a single 240 MP image. It only works with static subjects, but if you’re ever worried about whether your images are high-resolution enough to cover the side of a Times Square building, well, you can rest easy with the A7R V.
Yes, the megapixel race is silly and largely over, but I will say that I’ve shot quite a bit with the A7R C, which uses the same sensor, and the images from that 60 MP sensor are noticeably sharper, and the dynamic range is visibly better than what I get from the A7R II (which has a 40 MP sensor). This is obviously the case on screen, when viewing pixels, but I also notice the difference when printing images.
The fact that the A7R V is $900 off makes you wonder if maybe the A7R VI is on the horizon? Anything is possible, but I doubt it’s imminent. The A7C R, which as noted above has almost identical features, is still not on sale. Additionally, the A7 V (no R) is rumored to be due before the end of the year, and Sony rarely announces cameras back-to-back.
What if you don’t want all those megapixels? After all, they generate large files (80-120 MB per image in my experience). The Sony A7 IV (9/10, WIRED Recommends), which uses a 33 MP sensor, is on sale for $700 less than usual.
Photography: Sony
Although the sensor only has about half the resolution of the A7R V, it’s very sharp and has a few video-oriented features you won’t find in the higher-resolution model. It has almost the same excellent dynamic range and one of the best autofocus systems on the market.
Without getting too much into the technical details of video, the A7 IV can record 4K/30p video by upsampling from a 7K sensor region. On the other hand, the A7R V uses something called line skipping to achieve the same 4K/30p recording. This recording method results in reduced sharpness and sometimes causes aliasing issues.
