Sony announces local pricing for Xperia X series, starting at $499

First shown off at Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Sony’s revamped flagship line has now arrived in Australia, with pricing announced for the new Xperia X series.

Jason attended Sony’s launch last week, and now we know that much of the range is now available locally, with the Xperia X Performance to arrive in a couple of weeks. We’ve got all the details on pricing below.

Firstly, the outright options:

For those contemplating a carrier-contract option, Sony has offers available from Telstra, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone, though Optus are conspicuously absent from the offerings. The pricing appears to be mostly rather competitive, too.

Perhaps the only disappointment is the rather high price of the Xperia X Performance. When we saw it had been pitched at $700 USD, we immediately feared that the Australian price would be significantly higher (factoring in the notorious Australia tax). The good news is that it’s not grossly inflated; the price of $700 USD comes to about $920 AUD, against the $999 AUD outright price here.

We’ve not yet completed our review, but we do have a couple on the way for Sony’s Xperia X range. From what we’ve read elsewhere, though, the camera performance could be a little lacklustre, and some of the design decisions are a bit… odd. Retaining MicroUSB, when many are moving to USB-C, having a volume rocker in a rather awkward place, and the NFC antenna is on the front of the phone, rather than the rear like most others … these are some curious choices.

We look forward to seeing how the Xperia X range goes, and with some rather affordable handsets (particularly the Xperia XA at just $499) they’re bound to do alright despite potential misgivings.

At a personal level, we’d love to see Sony turn their fortunes around in the mobile space. We know (and they’d probably have to agree) that the Xperia Z5 was not their finest hour, and I’m crossing a lot of things hoping that the Xperia X range improves in some key areas. Jason will tell us all in due course.

For those wanting to compare the range, here’s our Ausdroid comparison table which you can tweak as you see fit.