New Lens for Nikon Z | Wide & Fast 20mm f/2.8 FF AF |

Slight correction filter size is 52mm not 57mm

Interesting little lens and you can’t go wrong with this price.

Thank you for this review, I ordered this on day 1 as a perfect companion to my 40f2 on my Z5. This will make a great travel combo.

Bought this lens for under £120 from Viltrox directly. That is a price I might pay for a good manual focus vintage lens. But this is technically a bit better than many of those and has AF. It is tiny and very light. For anyone who wants to throw in their bag a lens for the occasional wide shot, maybe someone who more often shoots say 40mm and above, this is unbelievable useful at this price. Viltrox now seems confident enough to produce pro quality lenses alongside very decent budget lenses like this. When I was a kid Japanese electronics, cars, etc. had a cheap but poor reputation. That changed. Now Chinese manufacturers seem to be repeating that pattern, all the time chasing Japanese quality, gradually catching up while holding on to great prices.

I can't wait to get this and the "pro" lenses you mentioned. Budget lenses today are better than the name brand lenses I grew up with. I think most of us need to relax a bit about perfect sharpness and just enjoy making memories or creating our expression.

Just got this in my hand yesterday. Excellent size/weight for travel, it'll be perfect to go along with my Z28f2.8 & Z40f2 on a Z6 – also purchased for street use. Not fair to compare to my S primes or even zooms, but those are orders of magnitude more expensive and rather large for casual street & travel. Corner sharpness & vignetting wide open isn't so hot but stopped down to f4-f8, it's good to very good. $150 for a relatively fast, fun wide angle prime with AF….it's just a screaming deal! I can't wait for the 16mm 1.8 for astro.

Can’t go wrong for a $158.00 US. I like the vintage look it gives images. It has its own character. The sun stars look good. Only downfall is you can’t slip it into manual for night photography. I like how my Pergear 35mm looks on the Zf this one looks good on it also. It’s great to see 3rd party lens makers upping the game with more lenses. Yes they aren’t pro break the bank lenses but with post processing you probably would never know.

You can see me?

Having used the Viltrox 75 and 27 lenses on my Fuji XT5, and having had results that I liked on that camera, I decided to get the Viltrox 20 lens for my Nikon Z9. I had no wide Z lenses, so it was an easy choice after looking at other lenses choices and price. Viltrox is going to keep lenses coming. 😊

I was waiting for this lens! Only to end up buying a Nikkor 24-70/4 S instead 😅
I chose to go that route because 24mm is wide enough for me and as a 24-70 it's way more versatile. Plus I found the Nikkor at a really good used price.
If I ever need an ultra wide I'll get the older F mount 16-35/4.
But the Viltrox is still a great deal! Especially if you have no FTZ adapter. Very impressive by what you get for the price.
Last year I got the TTArtisan 17/1.4 for the Z50 I used to own. It costs about the same as the Viltrox, has no AF, covers APS-C only and it's only really "usable" starting at f/4. So it's really cool to see how things are improving when it comes to affordability and price to performance.

I've ordered this one to have something reasonably fast and wide in my bag, the size and weight are attractive to me. Would have been happy to pay a bit more for weather sealing.

Hi Matt, I got my Viltrox AF 20mm f/2.8 Z yesterday in the UK and, for £115 GBP, it's a steal! Optical quality isn't wildly good, but frankly for general use where you aren't examining the edges too closely (twigs, branches etc) it's absolutely brilliant and best of it is TINY! I'm quite happy to shoot certain types of commercial work on it and once you get to f/4-f/5.6 the edges improve noticeably. Love it!

Oooh, I want this lens, thanks for the coverage on Z-mount. I've seen the Sony reviews, but the reassurance from you that everything seems on the up and up for the Z-mount is great. For ~$150 this sounds like a real winner. I have Nikon's 2.8/28mm and 2/40mm; I might sell the 2.8/28mm and pick this one up instead.

I have the Viltrox 24mm f/1.8 and it's a very nice lens; for the price, it's a fantastic lens. My only overall gripes with it are that the AF on this lens is a little slow and it's a tad soft wide open, but that's to be expected as there are very few lenses that are nice and sharp wide open. For the price, the AF and sharpness are fantastic. The construction of the lens is solid. I use this on my Z8 & Z9 bodies. I needed to upgrade the firmware on the lens after the 4.0FW release for the Z9 which was an easy task. I photograph a ton of very low light events where flash is not allowed (museums) and I generally have this 1.8/24mm on the Z8 and 1.2/85mm on the Z9. I have Auto-ISO on and limited to 10K and the results are great with both lenses wide open.

And you make a great point in regards to Viltrox's APS-C offerings, or any APS-C offerings in general. I don't do much video, but that's a great thing to keep in mind if I shoot more video down the line.

I think it's a good little lens I've got some of these lenses on my Fuji… I don't think anyone is blogging anymore with mirrorless cameras I think everyone is going to the dji pocket style cameras and go pros and that kind of thing it's much more practical no one really is blogging anymore with mirrorless cameras that I've seen. One of the criticisms of nikon has been affordable lenses and viltrox are fantastic 👏 👌

Thanks for another great review Matt!! I haven't used any Viltrox lenses before but news of an upcoming 16mm/1.8 for Z mount has me interested. Their lineup certainly seems to be good value for decent quality from the general concensus I have seen or read.

I just want a high-quality 35mm pancake lens on Z mount. F/2.8 is fine with me.

How would this perform for astrophotography I wonder. Not something I photograph too often so I don't want to spend alot of money in a wide, fast apature lens.

Great lens for cases when you need light, affordable and little bit wider and brighter alternative to your zooms (24-120f4 in my case). In my case this lens will be used 10% of the time and won't break the bank.

I'm in Luxembourg. Some studio work, some live stage work, so I am not too rough with my lenses, but by no means handling them very gently either. I've had the OG Viltrox 85m f1.8 AF pretty much from right after it came out as the first 3rd party AF lens for Z. It's not seen huge amounts of shooting, but is holding up quite well indeed. No damage, no quality issues, simply does its job when called upon. Then I got the 23mm and 33 mm f1/4 APS-C AF lenses. The 24mm worked (and still works) fine. The 33mm arrived 'DOA', but got that replaced quickly, without any issues or fuss. After my Z50 got demoted from 'spare body' to 'glorified webcam', the 33mm has been pretty much glued to it and has been doing a sterling job. Just can't wait for Nikon to fix the webcam utility to be MacOS 14.3 compatible…. *mutter*. Finally I've got the 35mm f1.8 AF. Same story as the others: cheap, simply works. No fuss. Do their jobs when called upon, with decent (though not exceptional) quality, but given their price excellent 'bang for the buck'.