Sony is displaying a curiosity at its CES booth this year: a 4K Handycam for consumer use. Kept in a glass cage, the Handycam is a non-functioning prototype that no one at Sony USA seems to know anything about. We were told that Sony's American engineers were shown the prototype three days ago and told to put it out on display. Although the vast majority of the buttons are unlabeled, the prototype has space for a pair of XLR ports, an onboard mic, HDMI, a USB port of some description (likely either mini or micro), and AV component out ports. The layout looks pretty similar to a typical Sony professional camera, and it's not much smaller than the company's current 4K pro models.

It's labelled as both a "4K Camcorder" and a "4K Handycam," with a note that says "concept model consumer scheme in XAVC format," but other than that there's no information available. XAVC is an open-source format for 4K video that Sony announced late last year. At the same time as the announcement, the company said that "in the future, [XAVC 4K] will be a format that supports recording, editing, and viewing — not only for the professional market, but also consumers." We've reached out to Sony for more information on its plans for consumer-focused 4K camcorders, and will update you with more information when we can.