Where on earth are 4K60 camcorders at the £500-600 mark?

[Oberoth]

We have had really good 4K30 camcorders around the £500ish mark for years and years now. Why is 4K60 taking so long to arrive to the price point? Phones and GoPros have been doing 4K60 for years and even moved onto 4K120 and 8K30. When are we going to see Panasonic or Sony bring this to the that price point, a HC-VX2 or AX63???

[IamNic]

Hello @Oberoth,

in my opinion the reason Sony "took so long" was the fact that the engineers worked on their own codecs to bring the best 4K with framerates over 30fps. Additionally they also kind of "skipped" 4K60fps to directly bring cameras with 4K120fps capabilities (the first camera is the a7Sm3).

As you are probably aware 4K isn't just 4K - there are minor or major differences depending on the codec/bitrate used. In most cases 4K60fps or 8K30fps doesn't look right or causes the camera to shut down to prevent heat damage (just like it is the case with the latest Canon cameras). That is something Sony apparently didn't want to do - they wanted to "do it right".

I as a customer am happy that they didn't just implement 4K60fps capabilities which aren't really usable because of other issues that go with it and for that reason I was also happy to wait.

Looking at Sonys usual release-cycle the camcorders which are 4K60/120fps capable will release around November this year, but they will definetly not cost 500-600 pounds on release. Even the FDR AX53 did cost 1000 on release so the same will go for the new cameras.

- Nic

[Oberoth]

For my use case which is filming low league football, handheld, pitch side you do seem to need a proper dedicated camcorder because the image stabilisation is much better on these plus the electric zooming and super fast focusing. I just wish they brought out 60fps version as I need to slow down clips at times, a 4K60 AX43.

[IamNic]

Hello @Oberoth,

as I said - they will come, but they won't cost as much as you listed as budget right off the bat.

- Nic

[Oberoth]

But there is absolutely no reason for them to cost loads more other than companies taking advantage of no competition. 4K60 is easy to do these days, sub $300 phones and action cams do it with the same or better sensors and encoders. It really wouldn't cost Sony much more to upgrade the AX43 to 4k60. Where it might cost them is in pro sales.

[IamNic]

Hello @Oberoth,

prices for new devices are related to how much money went into enngineering hard- and software.

It is not just dictated by the price of the electrical components.

The new camcorders won't cost as low as you want them to cost.

- Nic

[Oberoth]

I wouldn't over think this, 90% of the work is already done. They wouldn't need to design a whole new camcorder. They could use the same body, same optics, pretty much same everything bar an update to the sensor and processor to record at 4K60. 

All the complexities and codecs and stuff are tried and tested from their mirrorless cameras and phones (which are now 4K120). It wouldn't be that much work.