Buy the a6700 if you shoot video seriously.Three of its advantages stack on exactly that use case. In-body stabilization makes handheld footage usable without a rig. 4K60 from a 6K oversampled readout is both sharper and more flexible than the a6400’s 4K30. And the headphone jack means you can hear what you are recording rather than discovering a dead microphone in the edit — a small port that saves a shoot. Add 10-bit 4:2:2 and S-Log3 for grading, and the a6700 is a genuinely different class of video camera.
Buy the a6400 if you mostly shoot stills.This is the part people get wrong. For photographs, these two cameras are close to indistinguishable in any normal use. The a6700’s back-illuminated 26-megapixel sensor is newer and gathers light slightly more efficiently, but 24 versus 26 megapixels is invisible, both have the same excellent eye-tracking autofocus heritage, both take the same lenses, and both have a 2.36-million-dot viewfinder. Unless you need the newer AI subject recognition for a specific subject, the stills case for upgrading is thin.
Buy the a6400 if weight and money matter more than features. At 403 g against 493 g it is 90 g lighter, which is the difference you feel at the end of a long day with a camera around your neck, and it is consistently the cheaper body by a wide margin. It is also still weather-sealed against dust and moisture, so the saving does not buy you a more fragile camera.
In-body stabilization is the real dividing line
If you only read one section, read this one. The a6400 has no sensor stabilization at all — what it offers for video is a digital crop-and-shift mode, which narrows your field of view and does not help stills in the slightest. The a6700 has true 5-axis in-body stabilization, and that changes three things at once.
For stills, it buys you usable handheld shots at shutter speeds that would be blurry on the a6400 — which matters in church interiors, museums, restaurants and anywhere a tripod is impractical. For video, it is the difference between handheld footage that looks intentional and handheld footage that looks like an accident. And it works with every lens you mount, including old manual glass with no stabilization of its own. Our image stabilization explainer covers what it can and cannot do.
What IBIS does notdo is stabilize a walking shot — the sensor has only a few millimeters of travel, nowhere near enough to cancel the roll and drift of a person moving. If walking shots are your plan, you need a mechanical stabilizer from our camera gimbal guide regardless of which body you buy, and that changes the math: a6400 plus a gimbal may serve you better than an a6700 on its own.
The screen difference is bigger than it reads
On paper this is a tilting screen against a vari-angle one and a small difference in dot count. In practice it decides whether the camera works for a certain kind of shooting. The a6400’s screen tilts up through 180 degrees so it faces forward — which works for self-recording until you put a microphone in the hot shoe, at which point the microphone sits directly in front of the screen and you cannot see yourself.
The a6700’s vari-angle screen flips out to the side instead, so it clears the hot shoe entirely. If you record yourself with an on-camera microphone — which is most people shooting for YouTube— that is not a refinement, it is the difference between a workable camera and a frustrating one. If you only ever shoot other people or landscapes, it is close to irrelevant.
What they share, and why it matters
Both bodies take the same Sony E-mount lenses, which is the most important thing about either of them. Glass outlives bodies, and the E-mount catalogue — Sony’s own plus Sigma and Tamron — is the largest in mirrorless. The fast primes in our Sony APS-C lens guide fit both, and buying either body means your lens money is never stranded.
Both are weather-sealed against dust and moisture, both have a single card slot, both have a 2.36-million-dot viewfinder, and both inherit the real-time eye autofocus that made this series worth buying in the first place. Neither has a second card slot, so neither is the right camera for paid work where a card failure cannot be survived.
On the question of whether to spend the difference on glass instead of the body — which is usually the better move — our camera or lens upgrade guide works through it properly. A fast prime on an a6400 will change your photographs more than an a6700 with a kit zoom.
Our verdict
For a hybrid creator or anyone whose video matters, the a6700 is worth the money, and it is the camera we point serious channels at in our APS-C camera roundup. IBIS, 4K60, a headphone jack and a screen that clears a microphone are four things you will use on every shoot, not spec-sheet trivia.
For a photographer, the a6400 remains one of the best-value cameras Sony sells, and spending the difference on a lens is the smarter buy. And if you are weighing the a6400 against Sony’s video-first body at a similar price rather than against the flagship, our a6400 vs ZV-E10 comparison is the one you want.
One last honest note: neither of these is the camera for action, water or anything you would genuinely risk breaking. For that you want something small and waterproof from our action camera guide, used alongside whichever Sony you buy rather than instead of it.