I had the chance to play around with the NEX5 for a few days. Damn, what a nice little camera.
I'm very impressed with the image quality, camera can climb into ISO1600 and I don't care, because it looks GOOD. Using the twilight feature is even more impressive at first glance (set the camera to twilight mode and it takes 3-4-5 shots in sequence, the camera then processes the images into one removing almost all noise), minus for only being available in JPEG. I didn't study this in great detail, but the shots I took looked good.
My messy desk. I think this was 3200 with twilight mode, 100% view up left.
You'll have to do some digging in the menus, true... but once you have it set up the way you like it (for me, I just set it up like my SLRs) its not a big issue at all. I do miss the AEL button though.
Changing between modes (A,P,S,M etc.) is very easy, so is changing the aperture or shutter speed.
AF is not as fast as PDAF, but good enough for most things, very accurate.
The thing is tiny, well much smaller than I was expecting.. 18-55 looks pretty big on it in the pictures, but in reality 18-55 is pretty small. Very nice build quality on both the body and lenses (front of the NEX5 is in some sort of metal, all the lenses so far are made of metal). The lenses are quiet, you don't hear the focus motor work (SSM?). Its light, very light.
Video mode is pretty nice also, but you only have control of focus (AF/MF) and EV settings (-2.0 or +2.0) and the format (AVCHD 1080i50(p25) or MP4 1440p and VGA), still you can get some good footage from it (not that I have huge experience with video recording, but I liked what I saw). The built in microphones are weaksause though, but they have that add-on mic, I didn't try that though.
HDMI output (1080i?) while taking pictures in my little portable studio was a pleasant surprise. I hooked it up to the PC (via capture card) and was impressed.
The camera uses Mini HDMI. The screen goes black when HDMI is connected.
I took this shot in my little cheap Köning studio with halo-gen lights, using my PC as a monitor for the camera.
I recorded the HDMI output, you can view it here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5PCoJllJaE
IMO its the perfect little camera to go with a SLR, so I have more or less decided to get one.
Its much easier to get out/take with you and take shots which hold the same quality as a regular SLR. I will probably get the A-mount adapter as well, I have some lenses there which I am dying to test out in video. VG10 is on hold with this, too much money just for something I might not use that much (video).