iPhone 12 Pro vs Samsung S21 Ultra vs OnePlus 8 Pro vs Google Pixel 5

https://go.fulltimefilmmaker.com/9989...

 

's up youtube the highly anticipated much wanted

patiently waited for smartphone video 

the shootout has arrived the google pixel 5 against the one plus 8 pros against the iPhone 12 pro max against the Samsung 

s21 

ultra it's about to get real you guys know us we're a filmmaking channel we like to stack up equipment pick apart the strengths and the weaknesses and sometimes see how far you can push amateur gear to look professional so we want to take the four flagship phones of 2021 and see who comes out on top in terms of the best filmmaking tool there are so many phones out there but after asking all of you these four phones were the most requested and the ones available to us here in us we wanted to stack up the new Huawei phone but unfortunately, it's banned here and then right when we bought the one plus they announced the newer one in a few months odds are all these phones will be outdated but for what they are now today here's our review and FYI we bought these phones with our own money so this review is completely unbiased and not sponsored by anyone and before we get started we are currently working on a new smartphone video pro-mini-course which will be coming out very soon and will be included inside of our online course full-time filmmaker full-time filmmaker has grown to over 400 tutorials mover 80 hours of content 18 000 students worldwide and is the perfect guide for every filmmaker to grow their skills and business if you want to see our free one hour webinar that gives you a free preview of the course Click the link below alright so here is how the shootout is going to work I'm gonna go through 12 categories that are important to me as a filmmaker we'll give the winner of each category three points second place will get two points third the place will get one point  and the last place will get zero we'll add up all the points at the end and decide which phone reigns supreme alright so our first test is going to be which phone can shoot the highest frame rate in the highest quality all four phones can shoot 4k at up to 60 frames per second but the Samsung s21 ultra has the all-new specs of shooting 8k in 24 fps which is insane three years ago if you told someone your phone could shoot ak footage you'd be laughed at so even though it's not the highest frame rate it is the highest quality by far so we'll give three points to the Samsung second place we'll go to the iPhone yes all these phones can shoot 4k at 30 and 60 but the iPhone has 24 so we'll give it a second for the additional option and the pixel one plus will tie for third next up is the highest quality slow motion all four phones can shoot in 1080p at up to 240 frames per second as for the quality of these, I said the Samsung and the iPhone come out on top

the Samsung can also record 960 frames 

per second in one-second bursts in 720p is obviously a very crappy quality but still cool to have that option that's insane for a smartphone and the one plus 8 can record in 480 frames per second at up to 720p so we're gonna give the Samsung first place on this test with the one plus in second and even the iPhone and the google phone has the same specs the iPhone looks way better so we'll get the third place the iPhone and fourth place the google moving on to probably the most important test how well do all these phones perform in their basic auto settings in the native camera app most of us even filmmakers and content creators sometimes just want the tool they can just turn it on without having to adjust all the settings and if your the smartphone's your main camera of choice odds are you're using it for the fast-paced  run and gun filming and you just don't have the time to adjust thousands of settings so which camera performs the best with the auto settings in the native camera app as you can see from our tests here they are all good but all different but in my opinion I'm going to give first place to the iPhone apple's mission is to make all our products user friendly and quick and easy to use without any need for a lot of customization second place I'll give to the Samsung really impressed the image

quality on this phone 

a third-place I'll give to the one plus and fourth place goes the pixel but definitely was close next up to counter that test

 which phone has the best manual 

camera application

and settings coming in the last place is the 

iPhone and the one plus like we said before the iPhone was built to just work as-is and we've proven that you can achieve some incredible footage with the native camera app but for those who want to adjust their shutter speed white balance iso etc make their footage look better

the iPhone falls short and so does the 

one-plus second place will give to the

google pixel 5 

like the iPhone, it's very limited but with one additional feature that the iPhone doesn't have which is for built-in stabilization settings that you can swap between in the main camera app which we'll get to in a second and coming in the first place by a long shot is the Samsungs21 ultra which has a pro video tab a portrait video tab

and a director's view tab the portrait 

video tab is specifically designed to perform well when filming portraits like an interview or something the pro video tab is where you can adjust your shutter speed iso focus white balance audio channel and it's kind of like their version of filmic pro built into the phone and the director's view tab is a very cool feature where it pulls up every camera on the phone to show you what each focal length will look like before you switch to that angle awesome feature the one plus does have a pro photo tab that looks identical to Samsung's pro video tab but sadly it's only for photos next up is focal lengths and zoom capabilities every year whenever any of these companies make a new phone the one thing they make sure to improve and add to is the cameras let's start with fourth place in this the category which once again is the google pixel 5. it honestly just feels like the pixel 5

is years behind 

everyone else this phone only has two lenses the ultra-wide and the wide and

the ultra-wide comes in at about 16 

millimeter and doesn't even work in 4k only 1080p and the quality just isn't great none of the phone's ultra-wide the camera is very good, to be honest, but the pixel 5 standard lens which is about a 27 millimeters has an optical zoom of two times in a digital zoom of five times but the quality at five times is garbage even though the quality of the center lens is great it just doesn't compete against these other phones with three or four great lenses third place goes the iPhone with their three lenses the ultra-wide which again isn't the best the standard lens and their 65-millimeter equivalent telephoto lens the iPhone has a 2.5 optical zoom and a 7x digital zoom range which is much better than the pixel stack that up to our second place the one plus 8 which has the ultra-wide and wide lens and a 75 millimeter telephoto just a little tighter than the iPhone but the one plus is a 3x optical zoom range with a 10x digital zoom which claps the iPhone and the first place goes to the Samsung with their four lenses their ultra-wide wide 70-millimeter telephoto and special 240 millimeter telephoto making the phone's optical zoom range up to 20 x and the digital zoom range 12

 times past that now honestly the quality when you're that far zoomed in looks like a five-year-old's painting but still, it's the first of its kind and if you switch from a 4k to 1080 you get a much cleaner optical image quality and just imagine where this phone will be in five years The next test is the best color which phone provides the best most accurate final color straight out of the camera looking at our tests here I'd say the 

iPhone

wins this category with the one plus coming in

second, Samsung coming in third and 

the pixel coming in fourth now obviously I could grade each of these clips to look awesome on their own but for straight out of camera those are my results the skin tones and color palette of the iPhone to me is still 

unmatched by any other competitor and 

google bless its heart just felt like the auto settings were working way too hard to find the color of the scene

moving on to dynamic range or how well

the camera retains detail

in the shadows and highlights the iPhone

takes the cake

on this one with their all-new Dolby

vision hdr setting

which no other smartphone in the world

has the retention and detail is very

noticeable

when stacked up against the other phones

coming in the second I'd have to give the

edge to the one plus

just slightly better than the Samsung

both with their own hdr setting but the

one plus just retained shadow detail

better and the google sadly once again

came in fourth with a very hard time

overcompensating for dark parts in a

bright image mainly due to the lack of

an hdr setting

all right let's talk about low light

here we have each phone's max iso range

on the screen

the first thing you're probably noticing

is that we don't know what Google is

but as you can see it isn't very good

so we'll give that fourth place the

one plus and Samsung both have a max iso

of 3200 but putting them side by side

I'd have to say that the one plus

performs much better and produces

way less screen the iPhone just got

buffed with the 12 pro max and received

a

47 sensor size boost giving it an 87

low light performance increase iPhone

easily takes the cake on this test but

we also stacked each of these phones up

in photo mode and were insanely

impressed at how well they could each 

take

low light photos next up are the focus 

capabilities

in fourth place, we have the one plus 8 

actually which has phase detection autofocus meaning it

will grab focus to the most dominant 

subject

in the image nothing special there and

third, we have the iPhone which does the

It exacts the same thing but will also

automatically lock focus onto someone's 

face

if they're in the frame a feature that

comes in handy a lot if you're filming 

portraits

second place will go to the google pixel

5 which like the iPhone has dual-pixel 

af

with an additional tracking feature it

won't automatically grab a face but you 

can tap on any object on your screen and the phone will lock

onto that and track it as it moves

whereas the iPhone only does that with 

faces

and lastly in first place once again we 

have the Samsung s21 ultra which not only has dual-pixel autofocus and touch to focus tracking systems like the pixel 5 but in the pro video setting you can switch to manual focus and rack focus with focus peaking, it's not even a phone at this point, it's like a cinema camera it's insane the tracking feature is also way better than google's and can check an object

from very very far away for a long time 

very impressive the next test is stabilization

for me the iPhone wins this one they 

introduced sensor-shift stabilization into the iPhone 12 pro max which means the main lens is moving around and absorbing the movements naturally as opposed to correcting the shake optically the shots you're seeing right now were shot completely handheld but they look like they were shot on a gimbal so we did some tests walking backward with each phone and it was close but the iPhone just had the smoothest most natural stabilization every step was

absorbed and the quality was still

beautiful the pixel 5 actually comes in

second here for two reasons 

one it has four stabilization modes standard locked cinematic pan and active the standard stabilization smooths out every step the distorting isn't too bad and the quality remains intact locked is a good for far away shots you can take a pic or a video without

 shaking 

cinematic pan is for cinematic pants and

active is for fast-paced action though

it does drop your quality

and frame rates coming in third and it

was super close was the one plus

between the one plus and the Samsung

they both have standard stabilization

and then a super stable mode the

standard mode I'd say was a tie

you can see some jitters on the edges of

the frames but with the super stable

mode the one plus remains an intact quality

wise while the Samsung kind of falls 

apart

so oneplus and third Samsung and fourth 

but not by much next up is in-camera audio you'd be surprised at how often we end up using the audio out of our phones sometimes we just need that extra layer of sound effects from the onset and our phones always come in the clutch so which one has the best mic

well coming in first is the Samsung s21 

ultra mainly because it has three microphones and customizable volume control you can choose the omnidirectional front mic or rear mic

and right now I'm going to show you

sound test from each of the four

phones here you go this is the audio 

from the iPhone 12 pro max and this is the audio you're hearing from the Samsung s21 ultra this is the audio from the one plus 8 pros and this is the audio you're hearing

from the google pixel 5. 

so Samsung first and I'm going to give iPhone second place for most natural

sound the one plus had a lot of noise 

being picked up from all over and the google sounded very flat so we'll tie those for third and our last test of the day is the ergonomics of the phone or how they handle and feel the fourth place I'm giving this to google I just still feel like it's five years behind maybe you guys like small phones I don't it was awkward to film with because of how small it was and I just didn't like holding it third the place I'll give to the one plus

it's about the same size as the Samsung

on the iPhone but it's a different 

material and it's

very slippery you guess you can put a 

phone case on it but for the phone itself we feel like it kept sliding out

of our hands 

second place and this might be

controversial but I'm gonna give a second 

a place to the Samsung mainly because I love what Apple did with the iPhone 12. they reverted back to the squared edges and for me, it just makes it so much easier to hold all right so let's look at our final results the iPhone is in the first place the Samsung in second the one plus and

third

in the google pixel, 5 comes in dead last but before we crown the winner we're going to subtract points from each phone

based on things I didn't like negative 

one point goes to the iPhone and the Samsung for the hdr setting trying to overcompensate the highlights and shadows in real-time sometimes just look like garbage negative one point again to the iPhone for the footage ending up much brighter in post than what your phone the screen displayed while you were shooting so the final results

in the first place, the iPhone takes the cake 

not by much the Samsung and second the one plus and

third and the google in a very obvious 

last place

honestly google stop making phones or 

get with the program now again we could do tons of tests to achieve different results and at the end of the day you're going to want the phone that meets your needs and works with your life for

me I'm an apple guy I have an apple

computers laptops devices watches

so the iPhone just fits in perfectly

with my workflow, the Samsung is a

beast of a camera and I'll definitely be

producing more content with it but i

really

do love how easy the iPhone is to use

and achieve great results

but let's talk about the price tag maybe

the most important topic

of the video how much do these phones

cost and ideally

the price will match their final score

the winner the iPhone

comes in at 1400 for 512 gigabytes or

1200 dollars for 256 gigabytes

the Samsung in second cost 1250 for

256 gigabytes and doesn't offer a 512

option

the one plus comes in at 900 for 256 gigs

which honestly

I think is insanely underpriced for what

it can do and the results it produced

and the pixel comes in at 700 bucks for 

128 gigs which I think is fair kind of sucks so bonus points honestly to the one plus for the great price tag and I wish the Samsung would offer a 512 gig option but that's it for comparison you guys, we like talking about phones because we like showing that it doesn't matter what gear you have as long as you know how to use it you can achieve beautiful results we're working on our

smartphone video course right now and 

we'll be releasing our top 10 tips to achieving cinematic

smartphone footage in the coming weeks

so stay tuned for that but that's it for

today guys which phone did you like best 

and why

and what equipment do you want us to

compare next let us know down in the

comments and make sure to hit that like

and subscribe button on your way out

you guys thank you so much for watching

if you have any further questions 

please let us know

it's l thanx