AJA Cion Price Drops by $4,000 – What Just Happened?

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by Sebastian WöberMay 27^th, 2015

What just happened? The AJA Cion just became one of the most affordable large sensor cameras around. With its price dropping from $9,000 to $5,000 this is one of the most significant camera price drops we’ve ever seen. In fact for a camera that started shipping roughly 2 months ago this is quite unbelievable!

What’s the reason for this huge price-drop?
With internal 4K recording in ProRes at up to 60fps the AJA CION offers a powerful package in terms of technical specifications. The price-drop might be caused by the recent announcement of the Blackmagic URSA Mini which uses the same sensor as the AJA CION and has very similar technical specifications and recording formats for an even lower price of $2,995.

The official statement by AJA:
“…with this new lower price we’re completely removing the barrier to entry for so many in the indie and commercial filmmaking market…”

As a camera on paper the Blackmagic URSA Mini looks more interesting and capable than the AJA CION and the new Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K has even more to offer at $4,995.

The camera market is going crazy right now. Just last month Canon dropped the price on its Canon EOS C300 by a whopping $5,000. It’s hard for camera manufacturers to keep up with new developments and competition around every corner. For AJA the CION was their first approach towards a camera design and their development took a lot longer than many other renown manufacturers like Blackmagic whose turnaround time has become very fast since they released their first camera.

In our extensive review we recently took the AJA Cion into the field and found that it has some strengths and offers superb picture quality, but has some weak points in terms of ergonomics. Also check out our guide with 10 Important Tips To Help You Master the AJA Camera.

If the AJA CION was a camera you were interested in, now is a good chance to get it a highly reduced price. Before we can compare it to the new Blackmagic URSA Mini 4.6K it might be a good idea to wait though.

Alongside the AJA CION, the company also offers the KiPro Quad, Ki Pro and the Ki Pro Mini disk recorders at reduced prices.