Galaxy S20 Ultra vs. Galaxy S10 Plus By CNET

You want a galaxy phone and the galaxy s 20 ultra is pretty tempting, but the galaxy s 10 plus is so much cheaper, so which one do you buy, welcome to more or less the show where I compare expensive tech products to their cheaper alternatives and boy. Oh boy, the galaxy s 20 ultra is expensive. It is the most expensive gadget I have ever had on this show, starting at $1,400 in the US. By comparison, last year's s, 10 plus starts at eight hundred and fifty US dollars after a price reduction. So whether you are looking to splurge or save a little of cash, I'm going to compare everything about these two phones on cameras, design, performance and more so, let's get started. If size is important to you, then the S 20 ultra is significantly larger in the pocket than the s 10 plus six point nine inches versus six point four.

Now, when you put them side-by-side one on top of the other, it doesn't actually look like that much difference. But let me tell you: this is a significantly heavier phone in the pocket. I know what you might be thinking. Hey Lexi you're, a lady, and you have lady pockets. Correct I do so to test this out.

For the gentlemen out, there I found a gentleman with appropriately sized pockets. If you have larger pockets, the s20 ultra should not present a problem in either the front or the back pockets. It does fit pretty neatly. The s10 plus by comparison fits pretty nicely in whichever pocket you choose, lady or gentleman. Let's talk screens, because another difference between the two, even though they both use dynamic, AMOLED screens, is the refresh rate and the resolution.

Now the s20 ultra comes with a 120 Hertz, refresh rate, which you can turn on in the settings. If you do choose now, there are some trade-offs here. Yes, it does affect battery life, which I will talk about later and yes, you are only effectively getting around a 1080p or HD resolution. However, once you use 120 Hertz, it's so hard to go back if it's buttery, smooth, I, absolutely love it and going back to sixty Hertz on the s10 plus, you know it's fine, and it does the job and I have zero complaints about it. But it's like my eyes, have been opened up to a whole other world of smooth silk in terms of other design cues, you may notice that the s10 Plus has a headphone jack and the effendi ultra does not.

There is also a screen protector installed by default on the s20 ultra now I've been using it for a few weeks, and I've been noticing that it's actually started to lift a little on the edges. Maybe this is not a huge deal. You can just replace it yourself, but I would expect a pre-installed screen protector to last a little longer than a couple of weeks before it started lifting off. That said, both these phones are incredibly delicate, so definitely put a case on them. Do not drop them without a case.

Don't worry, we do that for you. So if you want to check out the drop tests of both of them check the link in the description both of the phones do have reverse wireless charging and an in screen fingerprint reader, and really I couldn't tell much difference at all between them. The fingerprint reader has definitely gotten a lot better on the s10 plus over the past year, thanks to a lot of updates, and now they're, both pretty much as fast as in responsive as each other. Both of the phones run one UI, ? and Android 10, so effectively they look pretty much the same once you have them up and running camera time. Let's take a look at some shots, because I think that the results of this is quite surprising, even though the hardware is significantly different.

I think most of the general shots of landscapes and people are actually very close. The real differences obviously come when you start to talk about the zoom capabilities on the s20 ultra with that four times: optical zoom. That then goes out to a hybrid zoom to ten times and then, of course, you can go to digital all the way to 100 times now, comparing a ten times hybrid zoom from the s20 ultra to a digital 10 times zoom on the s10 plus, it's not a pretty picture for the s10 plus. But if you don't zoom that much, then maybe this isn't a huge point of difference for you: I love the fact that you can get a usable shot up to 30 times on the s20 ultra, but, let's be honest, most of the time I'm, not shooting zooms. So for me the s10 plus is fine.

The ultra-wide cameras are close. There is a little more distortion on the s10 plus and overall portrait mode, looks good on both I think I prefer the shot from the s10 plus just because it has a little more sharpness in a little of color, but it is very, very close and don't forget the s20 ultra also has that magical, a hundred and eight megapixel mode with that giant sensor, so you can actually crop in a lot more two shots than you can from the 12 or 16 megapixels on the s10 plus. So you might be thinking the s20 ultra looks pretty good in the camera departments. If you are a photographer that really likes to tweak with things, but actually I think I would take the s10 plus, and I'll. Tell you why? Because it has a dual aperture lens, so it can vary between a 2.4 and F 1.5, so you can change it depending on the lighting conditions. If you are in pro mode by comparison, the aperture on the Siltronic ultra cameras is fixed.

So if you do want to change that aperture in manual mode, you can add a luck selfie time. Okay, so I'm, not a huge selfie gal, so I'm going to leave this one up to you. I think both are totally fine for video recording both of good. Now, the s20 ultra does have the added benefit of being able to shoot in 8k. If you want a future-proof your family memories, it's good to have it, but it's a huge file size.

One minute: it's going to give you around six hundred megabytes of footage and yeah. You might run out of storage before you've run out of things to shoot with 8k. It's nice that it has it, but 4k on the s10 plus, is also great. The only thing that you might run into if you shoot a lot of video on the s20 ultra is at the time of recording this video. There is a little of an autofocus problem with the phase detector F on the s20 ultra.

It just does a lot of hunting. It just doesn't look great. So hopefully a software update will fix that, and maybe by the time you watch this, it will be resolved. Let's talk battery, there are so many factors that go into what effects battery life. Now technically, the s20 ultra does have a larger capacity battery than the s10 plus five thousand William hours versus 4100 on the cheaper phone.

Now it doesn't necessarily play out that the bigger battery is better because it's all dependent on how you use your phone and connectivity of things like that. Both of these phones will comfortably get you a full day's usage. If you are a heavy user, then maybe you might be pushing it a little on the s10 plus and the s20 ultra might be worth a little extra cash. However, the s20 ultra does have a few things that do play into the battery life, such as a hundred and twenty Hertz. If you do have, this active, do not expect to get the same level of battery life that you would, if you just were using sixty Hertz I'm, not going to go into benchmarks and performance specs like that, there are plenty of other places that do it a lot better than I could.

However, what I will say is that there isn't much that I could throw at either of these phones that they couldn't cope with. Obviously, editing and shooting 8k video is designed for the s20 ultra I, wouldn't even dream of trying to edit 8k footage on the s10 plus overall I didn't notice any significant performance differences between the two with everyday tasks. The only thing I noticed was that just the s20 ultra started up a tiny bit faster than the s10 plus. Both is fine support. Superfast charging, the s20 ultra, is faster.

However, one thing that is very frustrating about it is that you can only get the fastest charging times if you buy as separate 45 watt charger. The one that's included in the box is not a 45 watt charger. You white, Samsung I, just paid $1400. For this phone and I still can't charge it as fast as I want to its kind of crazy I. Don't want to spend another 50 bucks on a charger, so the s10 plus also has the addition of a one, terabyte storage tier.

Maybe that's important to you. If you shoot a lot of photos and videos, I know that I definitely value that, of course it ups, the price, obviously, but the s20 ultra doesn't give you that option of a one terabyte internal storage option. Yes, they both use micro SD. So you can expand the storage if you like, but the fact that your base storage is 128, and then you can only go to 512 like why this shoots a K. You need more than 512.

If you shoot a lot of 8k come on. If you do choose to buy the 512 gigabyte version of the ultra, then you do also get the bump up to 16 gigs of ram very nice to 5g or not to 5g. That is whether this nobler in the mind, to suffer the slings and arrows of millimeter-wave or well mid-band or live with 4G LTE, the outrageous misfortunes of living in New, York, City or Los Angeles or Chicago on the south side for 5g or suffering the sorrow of 4G LTE. The BOD couldn't have written it better himself, so I don't live in an area with 5g connectivity, so I didn't really get to experience it on the s20 ultra. Let's check the specs.

The s20 ultra has a six point: nine inch, quad HD +, dynamic AMOLED with a resolution of 3200 by 1440. The s10 plus has a six point. Four inch AMOLED with a resolution of 3040 by 1440. The s20 Ultra is 220 grams, whereas the s10 plus is 175 or 198. If you get the ceramic version, the s20 ultra runs Qualcomm snapdragon, 865 or Enos 990, depending on where you are in the world.

The s10 plus is the 855 core Enos 98 20 PS 20 ultra has a five thousand William hour battery, whereas the s10 plus is 4100 and the s20 ultra has four cameras: a 48 megapixel telephoto 108 megapixels, wide-angle, 12, megapixel ultra-wide and a depth vision camera. The s10 plus has a triple camera array: 12 megapixel, telephoto, 12, megapixel, wide-angle and 16 megapixel ultra-wide. Now it comes down to the part of the show where I need to select my overall winner, so the s20 ultra is an excellent phone on paper and I. Think in practice, once you start using it, it probably gets around 90 to 95 percent of the way there. I am a little let down by the camera.

Yes, it is an incredible feat of Engineering I love that you can shoot at 108, megapixels that you can shoot 8k video, but overall I, don't use Zoom that much so. For me, it's not really worth the money for the extra zoom capabilities they do get on this camera plus the autofocus is not 100% there. Yet, hopefully a firmware update will resolve it, and it might have fixed it by the time you see this video I love the screen on the s20 ultra, it's a hundred and twenty Hertz, and it looks fantastic. The battery is incredible and honestly, the performance of this thing. It's a beast and I really do like using it.

However, the value proposition is just not quite there for me. So for that reason, I am choosing the galaxy s 10 plus. For me, it's just a little more comfortable to use in the hand than the giant beast of a phone that is the S 20 ultra I get a great screen, yeah sure I don't get a hundred 20 Hertz, but I don't think it's worth the extra like six hundred dollars for me to upgrade to this. Just for a hundred and twenty and the cameras are all so great on the s10 plus I. Don't need a hundred and eight megapixels of resolution and I don't need that zoom I love it that I could have it.

But for me, it's not worth all that cash thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the episode, give it a thumbs up and a like. If you did- and let me know if you have any questions that I didn't answer I make this show for you. So let me know check out some more related content, including an episode of more or less about ear buds and something else down there. Bye.

Source : CNET