Sony NPA-MQZ1K Multi Battery Adapter Kit

If you do any kind of concert videography or similar, these things are irritatingly useful. Without the record limit, you can leave an A7SII recording 4K unattended for about 65-70 minutes usually before the battery gives out. However, with this, that number is pushed beyond 2 hours, and that's just the longest I've bothered testing. In theory you could probably get 3 hours with just the two batteries, or twice that with all four. I think the A7SIII is either similar or slightly less time, but I haven't tested that so YMMV with that or any other Sony. A one or two man team can thus have half a dozen angles or more going for an entire concert without stopping, worrying, or running extension cords and AC power everywhere. It's rather bulky, moderately over-engineered, and the non-detachable battery tail is both too short and, uh, non-detachable. It would have been far more practical and compact if they made an actual battery with full-sized cells, but I guess the advantage to this concept is when your batteries stop working as well in a decade or so, you can just replace them instead of having to throw the whole thing out. I'll admit though, the price is a real sucker-punch. Sony tries to make it up to you by giving you a ton of extra bits and ends in the box (bracket for mounting to a cage, strain relief piece, covers for unused battery trays, 12V AC adapter w/ barrel plug for (slowly) charging) and about half a tree worth of paperwork/legal disclosures. The actual documentation is a giant fold-out affair, like an old street map, and like an old street map, you will never figure out how to fold it back the right way again. P.S. Don't buy/use this as a battery charger. Buy proper multi-chargers or multiple single chargers so you can charge your batteries at once. The whole and singular purpose of this thing is to act as a giant battery for your camera for a slightly unreasonable length of time, nothing more, nothing less. It won't pass power while charging, and it won't charge while passing power. You charge it up before the gig, hook it on your cage or a clamp on your tripod, and now have a powered camera for many hours. P.P.S. There's also a USB power out port on it. This puts out a meager amount of current, rated 1.5A. Sony puts a warning in the box that you should not use it to power analog audio devices which are also connected to your camera via headphone/microphone jacks (e.g. audio preamp/recorder/wireless audio receiver), I assume because of ground loops. So, if that was your master plan for decluttering, your mileage may vary, but I guess it's better than nothing if you're in an emergency and need 5V/1.5A power for your phone or something.

Trying to have fewer pieces of gear in the truck to charge the dozen or so FZ100 batteries we use - lots. Sadly, this doesn't charge all batteries at once, just one at a time. Major fail. Also, the charge state indicator of each batteries is far from accurate often showing a battery fully charged when it's only 60% or less.

It is a very solid multi battery , very practical in many ways. Removes the burden of moving with lots of cables.

It's nice to be able to charge four batteries however it would be a lot better if the cord and faux battery were not permanently attached. I will rarely use it and it just gets in the way.

This has made my FX3 a lot more useful because I no longer have to stop everything during an interview to do a battery swap. It's also nice to be able to throw 4 batteries on at bedtime and have them charged up for you when you wake up.

I need to power the camera for long shoots, to run it off AC or at least have other fully charged batteries is a necessity.

This battery pack allows me to use the USB port for the wired remote control as intended. It also extends the battery time well past a 29 minute video limit.

There are not other alternatives really. A few questions I haven't seen answered. Can it charge the batters and simultaneously Power my camera? No it cannot do, just one or the other. I was disappointed that for the price tag it cannot do both. You cannot detach the dummy battery from it. It is the fastest NP FZ100 Battery for Sony. It doesn't charge all the batteries at the same time but it charges it in order of the weakest one. There is nothing better out there so I am keeping it. This is the Fastest charger for this type of batteries.