Value & Verdict

Sony NEX-C3 review – Value

At around £450 with either the 18-55mm or 16mm f/2.8 lens, the NEX-C3 represents good value for money and the latest release hasn’t driven up the cost compared to its predecessor. However, in the year since the original NEX-3 was launched, other manufacturers have been releasing products with similarly fierce pricing – the Panasonic GF3 with 14-42mm lens is available for around £430, as is Samsung’s NX100 with 20mm lens. Each product has its own positives and negatives, but the pricing gap between all the major players has been sequeezed down to a minimum. There’s plenty here for the money, and with a top-drawer sensor such as this (think Nikon D7000, Pentax K-5) the Sony will attract a lot of positive attention for its reasonable price.

Sony NEX-C3 review – Verdict

The Sony NEX-C3 takes an already successful Compact System Camera concept (NEX-3 and NEX-5) and improves upon it yet further. The C3’s new sensor is a success, images look great and the camera’s smaller design looks the part too. The price is held at a very reasonable sub-£450 point and there’s very little not to like bar some control issues. While more buttons are available for customisation than previous generation models and, therefore, user experience is better, the overall feel of the menu systems and how tucked away some options are still doesn’t feel right – but that’ll be an ongoing feeling with the NEX-series. The Smart Accessory Terminal is also a fiddly fitting to add the provided flash to and there’s no way to add a viewfinder to this model. But for everything else the NEX-C3 does put on offer it does so with class. It’s a leading light in the Compact System Camera market – if you’re looking for a small and compact, viewfinder-free interchangeable lens system then the C3 has a lot going for it.