Camera test: S21 Ultra vs. Note20 Ultra

Video stabilization

Stabilization is available across all modes, including 8K, and there's a toggle in settings to turn it off if you're using some other type of support (tripod, beanbag, gimbal). We walked around with a side-by-side rig for the two phones, ensuring a fair comparison.

In 8K, the Note will let some of the shakes from your steps make it to the video, whereas the S21 Ultra is a bit more proficient in canceling it out. Pans are smooth on both, with no abrupt transitions at the ends.

In 4K30 with the main cameras, both phones will do an equally fine job of stabilizing walking footage, and they'll also remain pointed in one direction if you're standing still.

The ultra wides are in that same boat, and it's one steady boat. We're seeing no shake and no jelloing; pans are smooth too.

Recording while running is also possible in SuperSteady mode. Both the wide and the cropped in magnifications are handled by the ultra-wide cameras on both phones; only the S21 Ultra now lets you record on 60fps (30fps only on the Note). We compared 30fps footage side by side at both magnifications, and we'd say the new phone is a little better in the cropped-in magnification, with little appreciable difference in the wide mode.

Zooming in, the S21 ultra delivers very stable footage at 3x next to a noticeably shakier Note20 Ultra. That gap widens further at 5x, though the S21 does exhibit some jelloing here, unlike the Note. At 10x, the S21 Ultra maintains its advantage while also dropping the jelloing, and the Note now adds focus hunting to its already shaky performance.

Selfie video

Looking at 4K30 selfie videos, the S21 Ultra has a few advantages. For one, its footage is sharper and more detailed. On the flip side, however, it is quite a bit grainier. The Note, on the other hand, applies stronger noise reduction and eradicates noise, but it does tend to smooth out textures along with it.

The S21 also has the upper hand in dynamic range, and it will retain detail in the highlights much better than the Note. In backlit scenes, the S21 also produces superior videos with less clipped highlights, and higher contrast.

The Note has more saturated and warmer colors, while the S21 opts for a more neutral look. We can get behind the latter's more accurate skin tones, and the Note20 has sometimes faced strong opposition in the office for its yellowish skin rendition, though we can understand how an extra bit of warmth may be appreciated. For everything that isn't faces, however, the Note's livelier colors are more to our liking.

Switching to 4K60 levels things out in terms of detail - there's a significant drop in it on the S21, less so on the Note, but the Note did start lower in the first place.

You will immediately notice that the Note doesn't have stabilization in this mode - a surprising development given that it did, in fact, stabilize 4K60 footage back at review time. It's also refusing to autofocus in this mode now. It's not inconceivable that Samsung messed things up with the Android 11 update or one of the other patches, and a fix could be on the way. But right now, if stabilized 4K60 selfie videos are for some reason a top priority for you, then S>N.

Speaking of stabilization, and looking at the first set of videos above, both phones are equally good at smoothing out 4K30 footage. A small caveat is that shooting in landscape at an arm's length results into a rather tight framing - the two-phone holder we used for this side-by-side helps add a few centimeters of camera-to-subject distance, and you can expect slightly tighter FoV if holding the phone with your bare hand.