Sony announced its new A1 II pro-focused mirrorless camera during today’s livestream from its Creative Space event in New York City. The camera has various speed and performance improvements over its predecessor, plus a fast new zoom lens to accompany it.

Sony has announced its most versatile mirrorless camera yet, the A1 II. It succeeds the Alpha 1, which was a truly game-changing mirrorless camera when it was launched in January 2021, and features the same stacked 50MP full-frame sensor, 30fps burst shooting, and 8K video.

To start, the A1 II features the same fully stacked 50.1-megapixel CMOS sensor found inside the A1. As before, Sony says photographers can expect 15 stops of dynamic range for stills. The company has once again paired that sensor with its Bionz XR image processing engine but added a dedicated AI processor to handle subject recognition and autofocus.

The A1 II is also an extremely rugged weatherproof camera, with nicely designed rigid doors on the connection ports that stay out of the way when the ports are in use, while the dual memory card door features a push lock and is a better design than Nikon's, which can easily be knocked open.