Sony A550 vs Sony RX100

Lets look a little more in depth at the Sony A550 vs Sony RX100, one being a Entry-Level DSLR and the other is a Large Sensor Compact and both are designed by Sony. There exists a huge gap among the image resolutions of the A550 (14MP) and RX100 (20MP) and the A550 (APS-C) and RX100 (1") posses different sensor measurements.

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The A550 was announced 3 years before the RX100 and that is a fairly significant gap as far as camera technology is concerned. Each of the cameras have different body design with the Sony A550 being a Compact SLR camera and the Sony RX100 being a Large Sensor Compact camera.

Before going into a full comparison, here is a brief view of how the A550 scores against the RX100 with respect to portability, imaging, features and an overall grade.

Following is a sample of the gallery pictures for Sony Alpha DSLR-A550 and Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX100. The whole galleries are available at Sony A550 Gallery and Sony RX100 Gallery.

For anybody who is going to lug around your camera often, you will want to factor its weight and volume. The Sony A550 comes with exterior measurements of 137mm x 104mm x 84mm (5.4" x 4.1" x 3.3") along with a weight of 632 grams (1.39 lbs) while the Sony RX100 has sizing of 102mm x 58mm x 36mm (4.0" x 2.3" x 1.4") and a weight of 240 grams (0.53 lbs).

Check the Sony A550 vs Sony RX100 in the all new Camera and Lens Size Comparison Tool.

Bear in mind, the weight of an Interchangeable Lens Camera will vary dependant on the lens you are utilising at that time. The following is a front view sizing comparison of the A550 against the RX100.

Taking into consideration dimensions and weight, the portability grade of the A550 and RX100 is 63 and 91 respectively.

More often than not, its hard to imagine the difference in sensor measurements purely by looking through technical specs. The visual underneath will provide you a more clear sense of the sensor sizing in the A550 and RX100.

As you can tell, both the cameras have different megapixels and different sensor measurements. The A550 having a larger sensor is going to make getting shallow DOF easier and the Sony RX100 will provide you with more detail with its extra 6MP. Greater resolution can also make it easier to crop photos a bit more aggressively. The older A550 will be behind with regard to sensor technology.