Why it is Worth to Consider Upgrading to SONY a1 for Birding & Wildlife?

​I've had the opportunity to try out the new SONY mirrorless flagship camera, the SONY a1 or Alpha 1, mainly for birding, and I would like to share my thoughts on the camera based on my brief experience using the camera.

My Thoughts

1. ​When birding, I would, on some occasions, burst the camera to get the best possible shots, especially fast moving birds. I’ve used SONY a9 and then SONY a9II before and the cameras takes too long a time to clear the buffer and write the files on to the UHS-II SDXC cards (SONY Tough 64GB). During buffer clearing, nothing I can do to change the camera settings, resulting in me missing some of the critical shots. With the SONY a1, the camera buffer clears quickly and I can still change the camera settings while the buffer is clearing. 
2. I’ve seen some improvements on the AF speed from SONY a9 to SONY a9II.  My success rate was higher with the a9II. With the SONY a1, my success rate is even higher, which includes bird in flight. 
3. The resolution of the a9 / a9II of 24MP is the deal breaker for me.  Normally, to get the extra reach when birding, I would shoot at APS-C mode, which for the SONY system, it gives me the extra 1.5x reach, however at reduced 10MP resolution.  Even though there are Photoshop plugins that can sharpen (Topaz Labs Sharpen Ai) or resize (Topaz Labs Gigapixel Ai) the images, I would still lose some details at 10MP. The latest Adobe Camera RAW has a feature now to increase the resolution of the RAW image. With the SONY a1’s 50MP resolution, I have the the option of shooting at full-frame full resolution, or shoot at APS-C mode  which is still at a decent 21MP resolution. 
4. When pairing with SONY FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS lens, I would shoot at high ISO to achieve fast enough shutter speeds. SONY a1’s ISO performance is so good that images shot at ISO 6400 is still very much usable, when corrected with denoise plugin (Topaz Labs DeNoise Ai) in Photoshop.
5. The new intuitive touch screen menu system, which appears to be too cumbersome to use at first, turns out to be very well designed and once you start to play around with it. As a techie, I love that! 
6. Switching from SONY a9II or SONY a7RIV to SONY a1 is seamless since the camera body is virtually the same. It uses the same battery (NP-FZ100) and the same battery grip as the SONY a9II & a7RIV. As for the L-Bracket, you would have to buy an L-bracket dedicated for the a1, mainly due to the openings on the left side of the camera.
7. SONY a1 is like an-all-in-one camera, having faster speed than SONY a9, having high-enough resolution slightly lower than the SONY a7RIV and high-ISO capabilities like the SONY a7SIII. I’m selling both my a9II and a7RIII to purchase SONY a1.  This is a one-solution camera where you can use it for landscape, sports as well as wildlife and bird photography.
8. I can still use the old SONY Tough SDXC UHS-II cards for my landscape photo shoot as well as 4K video with the SONY a1.  So, the old SONY Tough UHS-II SD cards are not wasted.

Desired Improvements

1. Price per GB for the SONY CFExpress Type A cards is considered very high and prohibitive to have more cards. 
2. Hope for other third-party manufacturers like Sandisk or Lexar would come up with their version of the CFExpress Type A cards. 
3. Cheaper third party CFExpress card readers.
4. Bird eye AF can be further improved, especially for smaller birds. Perhaps this can be addressed in future firmware updates.