It seems like yesterday, we were hearing about a new NEX-5-series camera, but Sony is updating its line to add a couple of improvements to the shooter including NFC-aided Wi-Fi features and a new compact kit lens that’ll make the camera more attractive to people who need their cameras tiny.
The NEX-5T will cost $899 with a slim 16-50mm power-zoom lens, or $1149 with a twin-lens kit. The lens isn’t really new — we’ve seen it bundled with the NEX-6 before. We’re honestly more excited about the connectivity improvement.
The NFC-connect Wi-Fi feature allows you to bump and connect the camera to a compatible NFC device. This is long overdue — connecting to the Wi-Fi features has been entirely too complicated until now — and from our brief time trying out the NEX-5T, it seems like NFC could be at least part of the solution down the line.
Besides these slight changes, the camera strongly resembles the NEX-5R. It stocks the same — or very similar — 16-megapixel, APS-C guts. The overhauled, hybrid autofocus introduced last year. It’s got a three-inch touch LCD panel on the back that flips 180-degrees to make taking selfies a breeze. It still shoots 1920 x 1080 video at a variety of frame rates, but not at 60 fps.
The key difference between the NEX-5 camera and the latest teeny tiny NEX-3 shooter is the Wi-FI connectivity and the touchpanel. The Wi-Fi just got a lot better on the NEX-5T, but given the great Amazon deals on the recent NEX-3N and last year’s NEX-5R, you better think long and hard about whether that NFC is worth it to you.