Galaxy S21 Ultra vs Galaxy S20 Ultra Camera Test Comparison: Upgrade? By Danny Winget

What's up everybody: this is Danny, and today I'll be doing the camera comparison between the Samsung Galaxy s20 ultra and the brand new Samsung Galaxy s21 ultra so this year. I want to see if the upgrade is worth it, because the new Qualcomm snapdragon 888 has a new triple ISP and that should make a huge difference to image quality. So, let's test that and do the two optical zooms, the 3x and the 10x, actually make a difference when it comes to image quality, we're going to check that out in all lighting conditions, and we're going to see if this year's s21 ultra is worth the upgrade over the s20 ultra. Let's do it first, let's talk about the testing process. All of these images were shot on pure auto mode with scene optimizer on no edits were made whatsoever. Everything is straight out of the camera, so you'll know exactly what to expect and get the same type of results on your s20 or s21 ultra.

So, let's start with the daytime pictures. No real surprises here. The galaxy s20 ultra is only a year old at this point, so you can expect it to take fantastic pictures in good lighting. Both have great colors and lots of detail, but there are a few differences that I noticed. While looking at a ton of pictures side by side, it does go back and forth, but for the most part it looks like the newer processing dials back a little on the saturation, bringing it closer to accurate color, which is nice.

The sky color is more of a darker blue on the s20 ultra, while it's a lighter shade on the s21 ultra, which was more accurate to the scene, but you will notice this does swap back and forth. So take that for what it is. The main sensor in the new s21 ultra is a second generation, and I did notice some differences on day-to-day shooting. Look at this flower pick from the exact same distance. The image on the s21 ultra is much sharper and there are way more points in focus.

The foreground is more detailed and even some background is sharper with a little of sacrifice on depth of field, but looks way better in my opinion, but a lot of this will be personal preference, as usual depends on. If you like more contrast, generally I'm seeing that the older s20 ultra keeps more contrast in the shot which I can see, people preferring- and there were some instances for sure where I felt like the s20 ultra's brighter and slightly overexposed shot look better, but it really depends on the scenery and lighting at this time, and this is why I test the cameras in different scenarios to see really what's going on. I went out on a cold and cloudy looking day and again, some of these shots were looking better for the galaxy s20 ultra. But if you look closely, the balancing of the processing is better on the new s21 ultra, mostly with the handling of the highlights and dynamic range look at the clouds here. In the background there's some clipping on the older phone.

This is a much clearer example, so much better on the s21 ultra Samsung, with a combination of leveraging the power of the new Qualcomm snapdragon 888 spectra, 580 ISP, and with better processing algorithms. You can see an improvement in most of the shots. Some shots aren't as clear where they look really similar, but in some shots like this, you can really see a difference through the entire picture, like the clouds, the shadow detail in the trees and the slightly more vibrant colors. Here's another great example: look at this main sensor, portrait mode shot. The s21 ultra really creates that sense of depth and separation.

So, for the most part, I think you'll see a bump in camera performance all around the Qualcomm snapdragon 888 supports 10 bit HDR in photos, but high efficiency format is not on by default, so I didn't use it throughout the entire comparison, but I did take some shots on both of the phones with had format enabled and of course they both look fantastic. It could just be the white balance and saturation differences, but look at the color detail here on the tree with the sun shining through it does look more vibrant and more colorful. If you look at this shot, you can see a gradient of blue as you move towards the right of the picture, while the sky does the same thing in the galaxy s20 ultras, but its nowhere near as pronounced. So let me know if it's just me or if you see an actual difference, the practical improvements is where I feel like the galaxy. S21 ultra starts, taking the lead, both phones have a narrow, focusing area, and this is great for getting amazing depth of field, but usually creates a lot of fringing, especially on the edges, but I'm glad that the s21 ultra has improved that on this sensor.

It might not be a huge improvement, but you can see more of this leaf is in focus and the detail is better, but there is a new software feature on the s21 ultra called focus enhancer, where it automatically switches to the ultra-wide to get better and sharper images. Up close, you do lose some depth of field, but I think it's worth it in some scenarios. The minimum focusing distance still isn't great on both of these, since they are large sensors, but that focus enhancer trick definitely does the job. The next thing I like is the change up in the zoom options. The s20 ultra defaults to a 5x for the first optical option, where the s21 ultra gives you a 3x.

I think this is a much more practical and useful focal length for your first option and the dedicated 10x optical zoom on the new s21 ultra is really great. You can see the image quality difference versus the hybrid zoom, and this extends to the 30x, and it also extends to the 100x zoom as well. The improvements in detail are definitely noticeable during the day. The front-facing camera also gets an improvement on processing. The 40-megapixel sensor seems to have the same specs.

The s20 ultra still has a great selfie camera, but I, like the skin tone, improvements on the newer phone with the natural selfie tone. The s20 ultra is on the original selfie color tone. So it's running a little older software. The dynamic range improvements also very noticeable in certain lighting conditions, especially in really bright conditions. So, if you're a huge selfie taker, I think you'll notice the improvements, but both are still perfect with a nice and sharp image.

But I just don't like the Michael Jackson complexion that the s20 ultra gives me sometimes, so I'm glad they fixed that in the s21 ultra they both have a 108 megapixel sensor, but I was surprised to see that the older phone had a slightly sharper image. You can't see this until you punch into one thousand percent scale, so I'm not sure that a lot of people are going to be doing this, but this is the best way to show you can see the water towers. Writing is slightly sharper on the s20 ultra in this shot of the building. When you punch into 300 scale, you really can't tell the difference, but when you go in 1 000 scale, you can definitely see how much more detail is in the window. So this is the one that surprised me the most.

I wanted to do. One more test this radial tower is super far away when you punch in the 300 scale, it doesn't look much different and at 1 000 scale. This one looks very similar, so in some instances the older phone might give you a sharper image at 108 megapixels. The video during the day is pretty much a toss-up. They both can shoot up to 8k video, but the new s21 ultra can shoot 4k 60 frames per second from all the lenses this year.

So keep that in mind. In this scenario, the colors are more natural on the newer phone. That sky is closer to what I was seeing. They both have optical image stabilization, I'm going to start walking. Here you can see that the footage is stable on both.

I don't see many improvements at all. Actually, I really can't tell a difference. So that's a good thing. Let me know if you can tell the difference in stabilization in this walking footage. Autofocus was a huge letdown on the galaxy s20 ultra last year, when it launched, but Samsung has done a good job with updates to make it perform a lot better, especially in the daytime.

So you won't see a lot of problems during the day. You may get a few instances here and there, but it's not a big deal, but when you get into low light situations, this is where the galaxy s20 ultra still struggles. I'm glad to say that the galaxy s21 ultra doesn't have this problem. You can see it focuses without any issues, so video and photo the new phone is going to be better with autofocus at night. With that said, let's jump into the low light performance.

They both have large sensors, so they both do a great job. Mostly when it comes to photos at night, the s20 ultra has come a long way from launch with software updates. I did a ton of videos when it first came out, and it wasn't the best performer when it came to low light, especially with noise, but, as you can see, it does pretty well against the new galaxy s21 ultra for the most part. But after looking at a lot of pictures side by side, this is where you're gonna start seeing some improvements. First, let's talk about the shooting experience with these phones at night.

I showed you the autofocus test earlier, and this does affect some images on the s20 ultra when it gets really dark. Sometimes it just doesn't want to focus, so you will end up with this, and the shutter lag sometimes just causes you to get a blurry shot like this, because you thought you took the shot and then a second later it decides to actually take the shot, but the s21 ultra, I can say, is much faster and the experience with the camera software is noticeably smoother. So that's the first thing that you'll notice, if you're going to upgrade when it comes to images, the regular pictures without night mode comes out cleaner on the s21 ultra. While they aren't wildly different when you crop in you can see that they both have noise in the shot, but the s21 ultra's noise reduction is better and then going into night mode. They both improve on sharpness, brightness and detail, but cropping in you can see that the noise reduction in the new s21 ultra looks even better with night mode.

So this is a double win. Here is a crop at 1 000 scale, so you can really see the improvement. Here is another example: it's not like it's a night and day difference that you can tell right away but punch in a little. You can see that it's cleaner around the lamp with even more cloud detail. Then it's the same thing here you go into night mode.

They both look great you punch in again, and then you will see that you have more detail with less noise. So this is the recurring theme when it comes too low light shots. So what I did is I took a bunch of shots without night mode and then with night mode, so you can see how they do against each other. There isn't a massive jump, so I don't want people to get the wrong idea like it's a drastic leap forward. In fact, there are some shots where I think that the s20 ultra looks better, and sometimes the new sensor allows for too much shadow detail and introduces unnecessary noise where the s20 ultra here increases the contrast, removing the noise from the sky.

But for the most part you will see slightly sharper images with more detail on the s21 ultra look at the moon peeking out here. You can see it much better on the newer phone, more sky and shadow detail here and, like I said, it's not drastic, but it's noticeable. I did take a lot of shots with the ultra-wide, sometimes without night mode. I think that the older phone let more light in, but with night mode. Furthermore, I think the results are pretty much the same.

In this scenario, the s21 ultra let more light in on the non-night mode shot, but with night mode I can barely tell the difference with the zoom lenses at night. I think 3x is still a more convenient first choice again instead of the 5x, but at 10x I'm surprised how well the older galaxy s20 ultra holds up with hybrid zoom. The text is sharper for sure on the s21 ultra, but it's not a landslide by any means on this building from the ground level. They look great 5x and 3x here and then at 10x. It's actually really close.

So this is astounding since the daytime, the results were totally different. Where you're going to see a big difference is in the portrait mode. The s20 ultra uses the 3x for portrait, so you will get a closer view, but portrait mode is just better at night on the s21 ultra sharper subjects with better both. I really like the way that looks where the s21 ultra really pulls ahead is when the nighttime portrait feature comes on when it gets dark enough. You'll see a moon icon pop up and the results are just so much better sharper image for sure you can see it on my skin a little warmer, but the overall image has so much more color and again with better both.

This is the feature that will have you shooting portrait mode at night. Again, the results are just great and what's awesome is that this is also available in the front-facing camera. So this will have you taking a lot more portrait selfies at night without portrait mode, the front-facing camera in my testing has still been better even without night mode. Look at how much better the scene is controlled here on the s21 ultra here is another example. Here is the shot without night mode, and then here is the shot with night mode.

Both actually are really sharp. So the details are fantastic, but I do prefer the s21 ultras pick here, more here's another one. Let me know which one, you think looks better in the comment section below last but not least, moon shots. I know some of you are probably curious to see if the moon shots have improved and yes, they have here been the 30x shot with both, but the s21 ultra is sharper with more detail and naturally the same with the 100x shot. The s20 ultra shot is still impressive, but the details on the new phone are on another level.

If nothing else convince you, I think it's going to be the video at night. This, I think, is the reason to upgrade to the new s21 ultra. If you have a s20 awful nighttime, video remains one of the weakest features of the older phone, and you can clearly see it here. The video is so much clearer on the s21 ultra here you can see how much better the video is balanced on the s21 ultra as well. Look at the sign, it's metered much better, so you don't get the overexposure blowout.

The noise is controlled very well here in the scenario on both of these phones but again look at how it handles the brighter light sources its night and day for sure. This right here is an extreme test, is actually pretty dark, where I'm standing, so I'm going to pan into the darkness, and basically you can see that the s20 ultra is just showing nothing. While you can actually still see the brick and rock detail on the s21 ultra, even when you go into darker rides, like I did here at Hollywood studios. This is one of my favorite rides. The video looks smoother on the s21 ultra and then, when you go into the dark like into this tornado scene, you can really see the difference.

Look at the details. You can see a lot more of the tornado, so this might be a good reference for some of you that, like this type of stuff here at the end of the ride again, the s21 ultra is a definite winner in low light video. So in conclusion, the galaxy s20 ultra is only a year old, so I'm not going to tell you to upgrade if you don't need to, especially if you're happy with your device then stick with it. It still takes incredible photos and daytime video, and you still have a lot of features to work with more than you need, probably, but I think it's the addition of the small things and the minor improvements that all add up significantly. You get better dynamic range in daytime photos, you get more practical, zoom setup, and you get that 10x optical zoom.

You get 4k 60 frames per second across all the cameras you get better nighttime photography across the board with that awesome, night, portrait mode, better front-facing, camera and finally much better nighttime videos, so everything adds up to make it worth it this year. I would for the first time recommend this upgrade if you have the s20 ultra now, if you have a note 20 ultra, I would hold back, but the s20 to s21 ultra upgrade, I think is a go. So let me know what you think hit that thumbs up. If this helped you out, I hope you enjoyed this subscribes for a lot more camera comparisons. Just like this one, and I will see you in the next one.

Source : Danny Winget