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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and a few months ago, really over this last year, I've been kind of doing a search for a mirrorless body that kind of checked enough boxes on the list
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And I not only want a kind of a light option when I want to travel light, but on top of that, I also wanted to augment the video capture for my channel
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and so I wanted a really good video body. And so I ended up settling on the Sony A6500
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and it has really outstanding 4K video footage that it can produce
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But I did spend some time with the Sony A7R2. It's a camera I'm really interested in
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but it was outside of my budget constraints at the moment. But one thing I had noticed is that there was something
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that was in the Sony A7R2 body that was not there when I opened up the box for the
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the Sony A6500. And so as I began to root around in it several months ago, I discovered that outside
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of the basic paperwork that's there, there was only a few items in the box, a battery, a camera
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strap that frankly I'm never going to use because they're kind of a pain to take on and off
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And I vastly prefer this peak design leash camera strap that I recently reviewed
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And it's what's been on my camera nonstop. But beyond that, what I found as far as a charging option was only this
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A little AC adapter with a USB out port, and then there is a micro-USB port on the camera itself
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So the A6500 does allow you to charge batteries inside the camera, which has its usefulness
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but to not include a separate charger is a pretty serious problem
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For one thing, unfortunately, the A6500, it burns through battery. batteries at a fairly prodigious rate
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And so there would be a lot of situations where your battery would be run down
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and you would need to charge it However out of the box the only way you can charge it is by putting the camera connected to a power source and so it can actively charge Obviously not going to be a workable solution for most of us when we need to keep on shooting
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Fortunately, I discovered that there are some nice inexpensive quality options from a company called Watson that I found at B&H Photo
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I'm going to take a quick look at a couple of these things today because if you are a Sony shooter, I would recommend
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these options and even if you have something like an A7R2 and you've got a charging accessory that
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actually came with it, this might be of some use to you and I'll detail why in just a moment
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So let's first look at the most simple option here. And so this is a Watson compact charger
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and it is designed to work specifically with Sony's NPFW50 battery packs. And that being said
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these kinds of adapters, you can change out the plates on them. And so if you had another kind of
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camera system that you also want to charge from, you could get a secondary plate and adapt it to
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charging those batteries as well. But the really cool thing about this, and frankly, this is the
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kind of charger that should have been included with the Sony, is that it's, number one, it's nice
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and compact. It can, the AC adapter portion just kind of swings out, and so you can plug it right
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into the wall like that. It has a, you know, a simple light that will tell you when
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show you when the battery is charging and then, of course, show you when it is fully charged
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So straightforward. One kind of bonus feature that I do like is that it also has a USB 2.0
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charging port on the side of it. And so technically you could then kind of daisy chain on to your
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camera, for example, and run power out of this to that and so that you could charge
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two batteries simultaneously. I should also note that it does come with a ability to plug
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this into a car also with a different kind of adapter there and so that you could plug it into
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you know a charge port on your car and thus you could also charge the battery while traveling If you looking for a more advanced option however Watson also has these kinds of very nice
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duo chargers and the duo chargers of course as the name suggests allow you to charge two
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battery packs simultaneously. Beyond that of course it's a more of an updated or upgraded kind of
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interface in that you also have a digital readout on the actual percentage of the charge
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It will also test the batteries and make sure that they are not starting to go bad on you
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And so that certainly is nice. And there's actually a test button there as well that you can press
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And so to determine the actual charge and the voltage that the battery is actually putting out
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And so that's a bonus for that as well. Now beyond that, these actually it can run off of AC power, obviously, which is included
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And this too nicely does have a 12-volt input where you can plug into something else, an adapter in your car
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And like the cheaper adapter, it also does have a USB 2.0 charging port on it
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And so technically you could end up charging three batteries simultaneously with that
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I will note that obviously it holds a bit of a capacitive charge because here, even without it plugged in
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it's able to, I could hit the test and it can give me a readout of the charge percentage in the battery packs attacks
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It will charge batteries nice and quickly. And that leads me to just a third thing to note here
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And that is for a really inexpensive, and as I said, the A6500 and frankly all of these Sony mirrorless bodies
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They burn through batteries quickly. And so Watson also makes rechargeable battery packs that are replacement units for the Sony battery
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And I loaded up on these because they are much, much less expensive than the Sony packs
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And frankly, I really can't tell the difference when I have the Sony battery in and when I have the Watson battery in in terms of the charge
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And I not tested that scientifically but I have been using it for months And frankly I honestly can tell the difference to the degree that I don try to prioritize having the Sony battery in there
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I keep multiple of these in my use of peak design everyday backpack
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And one thing I make sure of is to have battery packs in there because I do know if I'm out shooting, particularly if I'm shooting 4K video, that the A6500 very likely will need a fresh battery at some point
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And so this has really helped to eliminate what is, you know, one of the bigger shortcomings with the camera itself
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And so I've had, you know, I've had great success with all of these Watson products
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And by the way, while this review is kind of specific to Sony, I will note that they make these same kinds of chargers for a wide variety of different battery packs for different camera makers
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And these battery packs are, you know, the battery packs themselves are fully compatible
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and the chargers themselves, they work very well. And so if you, like myself, are a Sony E-mount shooter
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and you've bought one of the A-6,000, A-6,500, Bodies, whatever, and you need a better charging solution
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check out these Watson chargers because you can get the compact charger here for $20, you know
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and if you want the more complex charger and its greater versatility
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you can get that for only $80. I've got kind of a charging station set up actually inside of a cabinet in my office
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and it just keeps, you know, there's no clutter and cords out
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And so I just keep batteries on the charger, and it will make sure to not overcharge them
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It will just keep them ready to go. And so if I'm going out for a shoot, I'll grab some fresh batteries and be ready to go
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I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you'll look in the description down below, I'll throw some linkage there
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so you can go and check these out for yourself. You can follow me on social media
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could become one of my patrons at my Patreon account. And of course, if you haven't already
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please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day
