Note 20 Ultra Camera vs S20 Ultra vs Pixel 4a! By NothingButTech

All right, if you think that you know which smartphone is going to take your favorite photos and videos, I'm willing to bet you that you're wrong. I certainly was. This- is my first camera comparison with the note 20 ultra also going to have another one dropping on Thursday, with the iPhone 11 Pro versus the note.20 ultra, so be sure to subscribe, to see that. But let's just hop right in this is a really fun video to make for sure all right. I've upped the game a little with a 27 inch.5K monitor uh. So I'm amped about that, and I'm going to be giving you my opinions.

So maybe you'll disagree with me and if you do, you should. Let me know nicely in the comments but know that this is not sponsored by any brand in this video. This is just totally an unbiased video with my opinions in it. So we're going to start out with this first image that I took of like these coffee pods, and this is fascinating for a couple main reasons. So the first reason is that uh, I think my favorite image here came from the cheapest phone, the Pixel 4a and the Pixel 4a really heavily adds contrast to images.

So I tend to like that. Contrast look. So you'll definitely see that throughout this video, although sometimes it does overdo it, and then I don't like it. The other thing to note is that both the note 20 ultra and the s20 ultra have been 108 megapixel primary sensor. So what does that mean? Well, it means that Samsung uses something called pixel binning, which is basically where they use all that information and condense it into larger pixels to get more detail and better low light.

That's like the idea, but they do give you the option to shoot in 108 megapixels, so I've kind of alternated and in certain scenarios I've shot with it and in other scenarios I haven't, and I'll be sure to note that in the phone name, so you know, but I think that you probably all remember the s20 ultra was plagued with some pretty significant issues. So, although it had this 108 megapixel sensor, the focus was often quite soft and the 108 megapixels really did not help significantly with detail, and they promised some software updates, and this is on the most recent software update. As of recording this video on august 17, 2020,, and it's not fixed. So it definitely was much more of a hardware issue than a software issue on the note 20 ultra they've added a laser autofocus sensor, so that has spoiler alert, helped a ton with focus issues, but you'll still see some of them, and I'll note them when they arise. But the comparison is kind of night and day between the note 20 ultra and the s20 ultra, and in this particular one in the 108 megapixel mode.

It looks significantly less sharp than when I went for the pixel bending mode. It gained a lot of clarity there, so I would kind of see your clear of 108 megapixels unless you get a ton of light leading into the sensor, I'm going to keep pointing out focal issues and other issues that we experienced on the s20 ultra throughout this video, but other thoughts quickly. On this image, I think that they all did pretty well with sharpness in this mood, and I think that it's kind of a tough decision between which one's the best, but I think that I probably prefer the Pixel 4a, although it is, it, is a very tough call all right. The second image is of some food with some natural light getting on to the actual food. So this is like the tick-tock sandwich if you've seen it on TikTok.

That's what I made and that's why I took a picture of, and it's interesting because my favorite color tone by far is the color tone on the note 20 ultra it looks most true to life. The Pixel 4a went to a little more of a magenta EU, which it often does, and it's not always flattering to its subject so, especially for human subjects. It's not always flattering you'll see that, but even in this one for food, not that flattering and scene optimizer was off on both the s20 ultra and the note 20 ultra, because with scene optimizer on, sometimes you get some like skin smoothing issues, or it misinterprets. The scene and the white balance is off, so I turned it off. Let me know in the future, if you want me to continue to keep it off or if I should turn it back on.

That would be really helpful feedback, but, looking at this image um again, you can see the 108 megapixel mode. I tried it again here because there was a lot of light coming on to this sandwich, and it's still so soft on the s20 ultra, like only a small part of it, is in focus. So there are two main things happening here. First thing is that the s20 ultra does not have dual aperture anymore, so the s10 of this thing called variable aperture, which was basically the fact that the lens was not fixed aperture. It could alternate between the two apertures, the lower the aperture number, the less in focus.

Something is so like you get a shallower depth of field. So if I shot a subject at f 1.8, a lot less of it would be in focus than it would have been if I shot it at like f 11. So that's like the first thing that plays a role in the fact that only a small bit of it is in focus then the second thing that plays a role because all of these phones have a fixed aperture is the sensor size. So the s20 ultra has a much larger sensor than we've seen on other smartphones in the past and with a really large sensor size, you often get like focus fringing, and we get it also on the note 20 ultra, but it was compacted on the s20 ultra by a faulty focused system as well. In my opinion, so even though the note 20 ultra has this large sensor, it did much better than the s20 ultra here.

This is a huge improvement. So if we look at the s20 ultra, only like the left part of the sandwich is in focus, whereas in the note 20 ultra it feels like the focus is spread throughout same thing with the Pixel 4a. The Pixel 4a also just adds a ton of sharpness always and one thing. That's fascinating. With the pixel ray like no sugar coating here, it's actual hardware sensor.

It's not great, it's fine, but oftentimes when I'm taking a photo on here. What I'm actually seeing in the viewfinder looks horrible in comparison to what I see after the fact with the processing. Google has some of the best computational photography, and it really shows that if they had like Samsung's hardware, their camera would be excellent, because even with this hardware, that's not ideal. A lot of the images are excellent. All right.

Another interesting image here, and I want to note- I did not nail the framing perfectly across the board on this one. I am human. I try to do my best with the framing and keeping it consistent, but sometimes I mess up. Furthermore, I still think that it's worth looking at, though, because there are a lot of interesting characteristics, but framing can obviously affect the way the light hits the sensor, etc. , etc.

So, just keep that in mind. Looking at this one, what's clear to see is that the Pixel 4a is again extremely contrast. It looks spotless. It's also very sharp. The s20 ultra also looks incredibly sharp.

Actually, when I zoom in and so does the note 20 ultra, all these are actually really impressive. The note 20 ultra has some really nice background blur going on and none of this was taken in like portrait mode or anything. This is just like natural out of the camera, so it looks really sweet, like the general background blur. One thing that I noticed on the note 20 ultra across the board, is that the background board, like the both, looks much more reminiscent of like a DSLR than it does a smartphone which is really exciting to see because, obviously, as the sensor size has gotten larger, the depth of field becomes better and the depth of field in here, and a lot of the images was really incredibly impressive. I'm actually touring with the idea of like shooting a full video on this phone.

So let me know if you want to see it, because that's how confident I am in the video making ability, and I'll show you some actual video samples in a little, but we got to move on to another standard primary sensor image. So up until this point you may be thinking, Pixel 4a is crushing, and it is for 350. This is unreal. How well it's performing in comparison, and it's because one of the main features of the Pixel 4a is its camera, but because it only has one lens: it lacks lens diversity, it is outclassed sometimes, and this is going to be an example of it, so the first shot is shot on the primary lens, and here it did pretty well again, the one thing I'll say is that the color tone is not accurate. Again, it went to that way too.

Cool color tone the light which is like over here it's off right now, but it is a warm light and the s20 ultra and the note 20 ultra portrayed that a lot more accurately, whereas the Pixel 4a went to a much, much cooler tone. Sharpness is pretty even across the board, though, which is really impressive, because again the Pixel 4a's sensor is not incredible, but I was just saying that the note 20 ultra and the s20 ultra have more lens diversity, and they do so. They have a telephoto I'll talk about that soon, and they also have an ultrawide, which is what I was testing here. So I went out to the ultra ride and they both did really well. These are both really impressive images.

The note 20 ultras ultrawide is incredible: Marquez actually posted some samples on his twitter. That literally blew me away, so I definitely want to test it more for the full review. If that's something you're interested in you should, let me know, so I make sure to do it, but it is really impressive. Sharpness is there, it doesn't have a ton of grain, given that the room was not evenly lit. I'm super impressed with it and while I totally understand that a 350 phone can't have the same things that a much more expensive phone has, it is a bit of a bummer that google did not include an ultrabite on here and another area where we see this lack of lens diversity hurt.

The Pixel 4a is in portrait mode, so the Pixel 4a only gives you the option to take portrait shots in a one focal length, whereas the note20 ultra and the s20 ultra give you the option to take it close and far away, and the Pixel 4a is only close, which is actually kind of like what the standard like portrait shot, looks like on a DSLR, because a lot of people shoot with like a 70 or 80 millimeter lenses on a full frame sensor, getting a little technical um, but I would love the option to be wider as well. Looking at this portrait shot that the pixel 4, I took it's honestly pretty representative of what the Pixel 4a photos normally look like super contrast and with portrait shots. It normally really cuts the person out of the background, which sometimes looks good, but also it sometimes looks a little fake. So with the default blur. This looks slightly fake to me.

The note 20 ultra looks a lot more accurate with like the natural focus roll-off, but both the note 20 ultra and the s20 ultra, even though I turned off scene, optimization and skin smoothing suffer from skin smoothing again, so it feels like no matter what Samsung just wants to smooth out our skin, like just let it live. When you have this great of a sensor and this much detail on a sensor, you should give the user the option to have a detailed shot and if they want to face tune it after the fact they can, but don't face tune it for them. That's how I feel about this um, and they did it's very soft here. The other aspects of the image, though, are pretty great and the edge detection looks awesome really across the board. The pixel 4 I did have some small issues, but overall it looks perfect and then, as I said, you can go out to the wider look as well.

So I did that, and both of the images were incredibly impressive when I did that, so the actual exposure in terms of like dynamic range is a little better on the s20 ultra. If you look at the patch of grass in the back, it's a little more blown out on the note 20 ultra, but that's not a huge deal. The thing that's really impressive to me is edge detection and the fact that they kept the tree perfectly in focus. I was like incredibly impressed by these two images, aside from the skin softening, which is a bummer, and I hope the Samsung takes this feedback to heart and maybe gives the option to completely turn it off. Even when it's off, I mentioned the large sensor, size and issues that come with that, and I mentioned focus fringing and remember when I was like we're going to get back to it.

Well, here we are getting back to it. So this is a pretty clear example of focus for engineering happening on the note 20 ultra. So, although it is significantly improved, obviously with some hardware changes and software, you still get it, and it's just the fact that it is a larger sensor size, but had they kept the variable aperture, you would get a lot more in focus because you'd be able to go to that more closed aperture. But that said, it is definitely better than the s20 ultra's image. Pixel 4a definitely has the most in focus, though like if you look at the word in the back, that's as strong to make like stronger coffee, the Pixel 4a, you can much more clearly read it on that phone and then the last thing about this image, and then we'll move on to the next one is that the Pixel 4a's color tone again is on the much more cool side which is not accurate to what the scene was actually like.

Something that does seem to help focus. Fringing is actually going back and then zooming into 2x, and someone actually suggested in the comments of the note 20 ultra video, that I try that, so thanks for that suggestion, I did try it in this first example. I didn't have it, and obviously you can see a lot of it isn't in focus. The s20 ultra actually looks better here again, Sony ultra sometimes really exceeds, but it's a lot less reliable and a lot more hit-and-miss comparison to the note20 ultra. But when I actually went back so further away from the subject and then zoomed in to 2x, it got a lot better.

S is still a little out of focus, but that's kind of across the board on all three of them and the rest of the image is a lot more in focus so uh. It feels like there's a lot of like food and drinks going on in this camera comparison, but this one was a pretty interesting image and I also did it because a lot of the sensors tend to struggle with red like they over saturate it, and they did in here. So that was really impressive. I noticed something fascinating with the note 20 ultra zoom, so we got to talk about it. This is going to be a zoom example.

The note 20 ultra has a 50x periscope lens, but it does not always use that lens when it's zooming. In fact, when you are at 5x zoom, it's still using the primary lens. Now you may be asking yourself: how did Jacqueline figure this out? Well, I did two things. First thing that was extremely simple is I just covered all the different lenses at different zoom ranges, and I realized like okay when I covered the lens, and it's at 5x, it's still able to take the photo, but if I cover it, and it's at 10, it no longer is able to take the photo and then the other thing that gave it away is that the aperture is different among the two lenses, so at 5x it still had that primary sensor's aperture, whereas at 10 it no longer did so. I took this first photo at 5x, and then I took it at the max zoom on the Pixel 4a, which is 7x just to show you so the Pixel 4a maxes out at 7x, and that's all like software based, and it takes multiple images to try to give you the sharpest image.

It's actually pretty impressive for the fact that it doesn't have any extra hardware helping it, and it's 350 dollars, so I'm not expecting the world from it. Obviously, no 20 ultra's image is a lot more impressive and when you're looking at this, you may be thinking like. Oh she, crazy Espa?ol is obviously much better look at that green, but the estimated ultra is lying to you. This was taken during a pouring rainstorm through a window and the note 20 ultra and the Pixel 4a are a much more representative, color tone of the fog and the fact that it was pouring. You can't tell at all in the s20 ultra that that is going on and that's not what it looked like.

So it looks nice, and it's saturated, but if you're going for accuracy in real life, it's not accurate or real to life. When we look at 10x again, both of them are pretty good. Looking aside from color tone, obviously because, as I already said, it messed up the color tone completely on the s20 ultra and the other thing that is really important to note is that when Samsung came out with the s20 ultra, they were going crazy, promoting the zoom right. They literally put on the back of the phone space zoom 100x like they were into it, and they realized. Now.

I think that a hundred times isn't necessary, and their money will be better spent, refining other things. So now the note20 ultra only goes up to 50 times. Zoom and I'll show you that, but it feels a lot better and the zoom definitely feels much better on this phone and also on the Estonia ultra. I had a lot of issues with the sensor, focusing when I zoomed in a lot- and I haven't experienced that as much on the note 20 ultra then the next option, on the note 20 ultra, was to go to 20x, like that's like the standard quick hit, whereas on the s1 ultra it's 30. So this is 20x versus 30 and the 20x looks good.

But it's starting to get a little pastel painting like, and it really gets pastel painting like when we go over to 50 and especially when we go over to 100. So I have seen some good examples with 50x like Marcus posted one of a deer the other day that looked pretty cool. So I think that it does have its place, but I wouldn't really consider this phone for 50x like if that's the only reason you're buying it. It's not worth the money. It is a nice feature to have, and it is incredibly impressive when you think about it, like that the smartphone camera can zoom in 50 times and still look okay and resemble the object.

That is pretty impressive, but I think that the sweet spot is 5 to 10x. All those images look really great, which is really exciting to hear. Actually all right. I have some more photo samples to show you that are fascinating, but I want to show you some video samples as well, because I think that the note 20 ultra has an incredible video set up. So when Samsung released the note 20 ultra, they stressed, we focused a lot on video, and I was like all right, like they always probably say that, but they actually did, and the laser autofocus sensor helps a lot with focus and the depth of field and the background blur looks extremely professional, a lot of the time in the note 20 ultra.

So you can see in the note video there's significantly less grain when compared to the Pixel 4a, and it also did pretty well with focus. The note sometimes has some issues with jumpy focus so like, while it's really quick, there's not a smooth transition from one point of focus to another, but I would take that over not focusing at all like on the s20 ultra. It would either not focus at all or I'd have to tap to focus a lot of the time, and this is a big improvement. Also. I didn't test AK video in this, but I did test 4k 30.

If you want to see AK samples, you should let me know in the comment below also Pixel 4a, while it's perfect in terms of photo quality. Definitely they do not focus on video nearly enough, so video quality on the Pixel 4a is not incredibly impressive. It's often kind of grainy and soft. Then I took some front facing video and uh just to give you an idea of the lighting setup. I had a light coming directly on me like the same light.

That's lighting this shot right now, but at a slightly different angle, the note 20 ultras front facing video looks really impressive as well. There's nice sharpness with it. The s9 ultra's front facing video also looks pretty impressive, but both of them again have uh some skin smoothing going on, and then the pixel 4 is also looking perfect. Although some of my uh facial features, some areas are slightly blown out in comparison to the other phone, it also has significantly more like grain and noise going on in comparison to the other two phones. I think that the note 20 ultra has the best front-facing video out of the three though, in this particular example, also as my favorite selfies, so Pixel 4a, and I've mentioned this in my past.

Video doesn't always take the most flattering photos. Sometimes it grays out the skin, or it over sharpens it and leads to artificial blemishes, and the selfie camera is also really wide on here. Um, whereas the note 20 ultra has the option to be wide or closer up, and sometimes that wider look like distorts your facial features like I don't think I look exactly like. I look in the selfie and you can. Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments, but I think it looks a little off and a little distorted and the note 20 ultra and the s20 ultra also have added like a really peachy and like pink hue to my skin, to make it look more flattering, but I'm not sure if that's a hundred percent accurate.

I think that it got my skin tone more right than the Pixel 4a, but I think it went a little too far on it and there's a main area that you're, probably realizing, is missing right now, and its night shots and the reason I didn't include it in this video is because I think that it deserves its own video. To be honest, the Pixel 4a has incredible night modes and the note 20 ultra has gotten much, much better at low light. So if you want to see a full video on that, I'm more than happy to make it, and I think that it would be a fascinating one as well. I think that's, a no 20 ultra overall is incredibly impressive. This year, like the s20 ultra, we had extremely high expectations, and it let us down to a point that was really sad.

Actually like I, I was sad about it like the focus was bad. A lot of the images were mediocre and in this test it didn't perform terribly, but it took some more effort to get good photos on this phone than the others. I think the note20 ultra they fixed a lot of the things the laser autofocus sensor, the improved zoom, it's a much more solid package, and it feels like you're getting a lot more for your money than you were on the s20 ultra, which some argued was a little overpriced, and I'm really excited to share with you how compared to the iPhone 11 Pro, because the iPhone 11 Pro has kind of been known as like the video king, and this has made great strides. So that's going to be an interesting video and if it's already up by the time, you're watching this one I'll put it in the description. If you want to check out a camera comparison that I made with much cheaper phones, you can click right here.

It's the OnePlus word and a couple others, and if you want to check out another random video that was selected just for you, click right here subscribe right here. Thank you guys so much for watching. Please leave a like if you enjoyed it, and I'll catch you in the next one. Thank you again for watching bye.

Source : NothingButTech