Before installing the lens at a Sony FE-Emount body, you need to check the compatibility of the lens, as Viltrox has posted on the official website. We see that most recent Sony bodies are compatible and only very old Sony bodies like the Sony A7 are not fully supported.

The next step is to visit the product support page and see if the product has an updated firmware update. To check the firmware revision of your lens, connect the lens with a Type-C cable with a host system and a new USB device will appear,

Inside you will find a text file that is called DeviceInformation.txt and includes the requested information of the lens. Our lens had 1.04 firmware installed.

Looking at the official website, we did saw a newer firmware revision named 1.05 that included

1. Optimize the AF speed of the lens for some cameras.
2. lmprove the focusing stability of the lens.

To update the firmware, just download the zip package, unzip it, and drag and drop the .dat file at the lens, it takes some seconds, and the device will disconnect and reconnect. After that, you need to re-check the DeviceInformation.txt and there you can see that the SoftwareVersion of the lens is now 1.05. This was a very smooth firmware upgrade!

To attach the lens, just remove the old one and install the new one. This is how would look at a Sony A7III body.

The lens has several marks at the front, indicating the lens characteristics, like the minimal focus distance, 0.51m, the Φ of the lens, and the mm and F.

Powering up the Sony A7III, the body recognizes the lens without any problem, and you can set the F of the lens as well as the aperture with the back dials. The lens is very small, compact, and lightweight, the first thing we tested, was the autofocus speed, and even with the old Sony A7III, we found that it was near silent and the focus hunt was minimal. That is nice! You can expect similar results either in a photo or Video mode, also we noticed that the Eye AF Tracking with our Sony A7III works very well.

Let's start with Sharpness. We all need and want our lens to be as sharp as possible when wide open (F2.0). The Viltrox AF 50mm F2.0 Air is very SHAPR at F2.0! The center is almost perfect, while corners do become excellent as well at F4.0. That means you will get very good results with portraits at F2.0 and if going for F2.8 results will become even better with natural colours and good skin rendering. The lens can go up to F16 in case you need it.

Lens distortion is very low, down to minimal and if case you take pictures of straight lines and something bothers you, just load the picture at LighRoom and play with the settings to correct this.

On the other hand, Vignetting is very high at F2 and you need to correct it at post. If you step down to F2.8 and F4.0 Vignetting will disappear so keep this in mind.

More good news comes from the Chromatic aberration area, we didn't notice anything weird that should worry you. Taking pictures against the sun seems to trouble this lens, since we found sun flare resistance to be medium, stepping down to F16 will get you sun stars, even though the 9 blades are not so well defined.

Bokeh can be said to be good, even isn't top-notch like for example an F1.2 lens. That doesn't mean is bad, it all comes down to personal preferences. If you step down to F4.0 and higher you will get well-rounded Bokeh balls. Lastly, while we don't like much Video, you will get good results with good sharpness slight focus breathing, and satisfactory AF.