Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Pros and cons By Tom’s Guide

By Tom’s Guide
Aug 13, 2021
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Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Pros and cons

The Samsung Galaxy s21 ultra is designed to deliver everything you could possibly want in a big screen: android phone for 11.99 or 100 more than the iPhone 12 Pro max. You get a dynamic 6.8 inch display and dual telephoto lenses for crazy zoom power, plus the s21 ultra supports the s pen, a first for the galaxy s series, but there's some notable trade-offs here. Here are the pros and cons in our galaxy s21 ultra review, the galaxy s21 ultra is a monolith of a phone. Yes, the contour cut camera design blends the camera bump into the glass back, but this is a massive device. You'll want to use with two hands with a 0.35 inch profile and weight of over 8 ounces. The s21 ultra is thicker and heavier than the iPhone 12 Pro max.

The display is gently curved, unlike the fully flat regular galaxy s21, but not annoyingly, so I never accidentally tap something on screen, as I did with last year's ultra. One of my favorite design upgrades is the 1.7 times larger, fingerprint sensor. It makes it easier to unlock the phone, and I found that the ultra didn't ask me to press the sensor again like previous Samsung phones, the s21 ultra comes in just two colors in phantom black and phantom silver. I might go with black because of its slimming effect. The galaxy s21 ultra simply has the best display on a phone yet and not just because it offers stunning image quality.

Yes, you'll be mesmerized. When watching videos on this phablet, the colors are as rich as ever and the viewing angles nice and wide when binge-watching on Netflix, but the ultra surpasses the iPhone with its dynamic refresh rate. Not only do you get super smooth, scrolling and gameplay, you now get 120 hertz and quad HD resolution at the same time, so you don't have to choose between the highest resolution and highest refresh rates. The s21 ultra is also smart enough to automatically dial down the refresh rate to 10 hertz. To help save on power.

The galaxy s21 ultra will make you feel like a secret agent, as you zoom in while the iPhone 12 Pro max is stuck at 2.5 x, optical zoom, the s21 ultra packs two telephoto lenses of 3x and 10x. I was amazed how close I could get to this building across the river. The zoom gets a bit shaky as you get close to the 100x space zoom, but you can stabilize it with the new zoom lock feature to get a better shot. The main 108 megapixel sensor on the s21 ultra delivered amazing, sharpness and color. In our test shots take this photo of towering trees.

You can make out fine detail in the bark and the phone does a great job capturing the clouds against the blue sky, even while dealing with all the shadows in the foreground. In fact, this camera is so good. It may make you want to eat your vegetables. The s21 ultra captures every nook and cranny of these green peppers. You can also expect very good low light performance from the s21 ultra as you'll see in this pic taken at night.

You can make out more of the stones and bushes in the foreground in the s21 ultras photo compared to the iPhone 12 Pro max. Although the iPhone's colors look more natural, the s21 ultra also takes better looking portraits now, thanks to its improved AI that separates the subject. From the background. The s21 ultra delivers a good both effect here, but I prefer the skin tone and details in my clothes offered by the iPhone 12 Pro max the s21 ultra lets. You have more fun when shooting video with its new director's view mode, you can record using the front and back cameras at the same time, which opens up all sorts of possibilities, even if you're not a vlogger.

I also like that you can easily switch between the multiple lenses through a live thumbnail view of what the scene will look like. The footage itself is stunning, with the ability to shoot, 8k clips up to 24 frames per second, and you can record 4k videos at 60fps through every single lens, as I swept around a river with the s21 ultra, it delivered near movie, quality results, the dark, blue water dock and puffy clouds all came through crystal clear and, yes, you can feel free to move around a lot while shooting with super steady mode engaged. I captured smooth footage, even as I walked fast up a hill if you want to take photos and stills at once. The single take 2.0 feature on the s21 ultra is pretty fun. It managed to capture my attempt at a reverse layup in slo-mo and pick a pretty good photo at the top of the jump.

The galaxy s21 ultra is one of the first phones powered by Qualcomm snapdragon 888 chips, which is complemented by 12 or 16 gigs of ram, and this is one fast android phone. The s21 ultra didn't flinch, as I slice through multiple enemies in grim valor, while delivering console quality visuals, and this flagship backs up my experience with impressive benchmark scores on geek bench 5, the s21 ultra notched over 3400 on the multi-core test and over 1100 on single core, that's behind the iPhone 12 Pro max, which cleared 4100 and 1600. But it's still one of the best scores we've seen from an android phone. The s21 ultra also fared well on the 3dmark wildlife, graphics benchmark, hitting 34 frames per second, the iPhone 12 Pro max averaged 41 fps. Unfortunately, while you have a range of storage options to choose from for the s21 ultra in 128, 256 or 512 gigabytes, Samsung ditched the micro SD card slot this time around.

So you can expand. The s21 ultra's display has a digitizer built in which means you can use an s pen for taking notes, drawing or making fine edits on photos. But there's two big buts here: one you'll have to pay extra for the s pen and two there's nowhere to put the stylus, so you'll have to invest in a case with a holster built in Samsung sells a case and s pen combo for 89 bucks. The Galaxy Note 21 ultra offers a new x60 modem from Qualcomm, and the performance was pretty solid. In my neck of the woods on T-Mobile I saw download speeds exceed 160 megabits per second, it's not fantastic, but the iPhone 12 Pro max mustered only 100 megabits per second in the same location.

When I pop the same sim card in that phone, if you're looking for a phone that can last all day, this is it on our web surfing battery test over 5g, the s21 ultra's 5 000 William hour battery endured for 11 hours and 25 minutes that beats the iPhone 12 Pro max's 1053 and lands. The ultra on our best phone battery life list note that this time is with 60hz display mode turned on and that you'll see less battery life with hertz mode. The biggest bummer is that you don't get a charger in the box. Yes, it's the green thing to do, but if you haven't bought a phone in the last couple of years and don't have USB, it will mean more money. Coming out of your pocket.

Samsung has nearly perfected the big screen phone with the galaxy s21 ultra the display is best in class. The cameras are much improved, and you can even use this thing as a Galaxy Note, if you want to personally, I see the s pen support as more of a bonus because of the added cost. There are some things I don't like about this flagship. It's a bit big and heavy, and the lack of a charger and micro SD card slot, both sting and while the s21 ultra is fast. It's still a step behind the iPhone 12 Pro max.

Then again, Samsung's phone lasts longer on a charge and lets you do more with its cameras, the bottom line, if you're looking for the pinnacle of android phones, the s21 ultra, is it for Tom's guide. This is mark spoonier.


Source : Tom’s Guide

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