Sony Misleading Consumers With Their AX53 4K Handycam Balanced Optical SteadyShot Claims?

If you look at the above photo which reads

The performance packed into the top-class 4K Handycam® is peerless. Balanced Optical SteadyShot™ and Fast Intelligent AF achieve exactly the images you aim for. A new microphone structure captures ambience that’s all-surrounding. You can even play with time in motion or gain control of pro-style/manual functions. The possibilities and pleasures are endless.

what would be your takeaway from Sony’s newly-announced 4K Handycam that I previewed at CES? Or how about this

which reads

The short movie below shows the camera shake compensation effects of Balanced Optical SteadyShot (right) and optical image stabilisation (left), respectively.

I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about Sony but even I, who should hopefully be a little better versed in the company and their products, thought, when reading their page about the AX53, that it offered 4K video recording with Balanced Optical SteadyShot.

Except it doesn’t, despite the words 4K being plastered all over the page and the improvements of image stabilization being touted left and right. More after the jump.

Even if you’ve done your due diligence to scan Sony’s landing page about the AX53, it’s still hard to figure out that their latest Handycam doesn’t actually offer Balanced Optical SteadyShot in 4K because even at the end where its specs are laid out before us, it reads

Balanced Optical SteadyShot™ with 5-axis Intelligent Active mode ⁶

You see that 6 at the end? It refers to the footnotes at the bottom of the page which by default are closed or hidden if you like. That is until you click on the tab which opens all the disclaimers with one reading

6. Not supported at 4K.

Maybe all of this is a big misunderstanding or perhaps I’m reading too far into it. Heck, maybe I’m just not smart enough to navigate their site, but it sure does look to me that there is a little bit of unintentional misleading happening on the AX53’s page. That’s a shame because, from everything I’ve seen of the camera, it’s shaping up to be a great upgrade over the AX33. Perhaps more importantly though, how many consumers will purchase this camera and think to themselves that their 4K footage is going to look pretty great, even when running around because Sony’s otherwise fantastic Balanced Optical SteadyShot is helping make their video smoother when in reality, it only works in 1080p mode? Chances are that if you bought that camera, you probably bought it for its 4K capabilities.