Huawei Mate 20 review

Shootout - Mate 20 vs. Mate 20 Pro

Huawei Mate 20 has a different triple camera on the back, which on paper seems less capable than the Mate 20 Pro's. And we are sure many of you are wondering what will be the difference in quality. So, we took both phones for a spin, shot some pictures, and here's how they stack up. We've left the telephoto cameras out of this as the difference in the field of view (52mm vs 80mm) makes it very hard to compare those fairly.

In well lit environments the Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro photos are pretty much identical in quality. The field of view, the color rendition, the contrast, and the dynamic range - those are all on par. In fact, we observed more resolved detail in areas of uniform color and texture on the 12MP Huawei Mate 20 shots. The Mate 20 foliage presentation was a little bit better as well, with better defined grass and leaves.

So, it turns out that if you are into pixel-peeping, the Huawei Mate 20 might actually be the better shooter for the sunny scenes.

You can use the shortcut for our side-by-side photo compare tool available on each section of samples.

Huawei Mate 20 12MP daylight photos

Huawei Mate 20 Pro 10MP daylight photos

The 16MP ultra-wide angle shots are also close to what that Mate 20 Pro can do with its 20MP ultra-wide angle camera. The regular Mate 20 enjoys less noise and corner softness, and slightly better foliage presentation, but the Pro resolves more detail elsewhere. The latter of course is to be expected as the Mate 20 Pro shoots in higher resolution.

Still, for most intents and purposes, the ultra-wide-angle shots in bright days are equal.

Huawei Mate 20 16MP daylight ultra-wide-angle photos

Huawei Mate 20 Pro 20MP ultra-wide-angle daylight photos

The regular 12MP camera on the Mate 20 shoots good low-light photos, while the Mate 20 Pro captures excellent ones. The 10MP Pro photos have less noise, more detail, better exposure and dynamic range. The Mate 20 Pro clearly demonstrates its higher standing when the conditions get tough.

Huawei Mate 20 12MP low-light photos

Huawei Mate 20 Pro 10MP low-light photos

The ultra-wide-angle comparison results in similar conclusions. The photos we took with the regular Mate 20 are noisier than the Pro's, have less detail and poorer contrast, and the colors are washed out. Their dynamic range is quite poor, too. The Mate 20 Pro wins this round, too, even if its images are not that impressive, either.

Huawei Mate 20 16MP ultra-wide-angle low-light photos

Huawei Mate 20 Pro 20MP ultra-wide-angle low-light photos

The main camera on both Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro capture some brilliant low-light photos with the Night Mode. The Mate 20 Pro images are superior though, with no detail falloff towards the corners, more detail and less noise. The difference isn't that big though, so no matter which of these two devices you own, you will be quite happy with its Night mode.

Huawei Mate 20 12MP low-light photos with Night Mode

Huawei Mate 20 Pro 10MP low-light photos with Night Mode

The ultra-wide-angle cameras can do Night Mode, too. The Mate 20 images are a bit noisier than the Mate 20 Pro's, but other than that - on par as far as detail, colors, and contrast are concerned.

Huawei Mate 20 16MP ultra-wide-angle low-light photos with Night Mode

Huawei Mate 20 Pro 20MP ultra-wide-angle low-light photos with Night Mode

So, the Mate 20 seems just as capable as the Pro in daylight (even slightly ahead), while the Mate 20 Pro excels the low-light scenarios.

Portraits

Huawei Mate 20 has three cameras on its back and would have been inexcusable if Portrait Mode wasn't present. The feature, however, has changed since the P20 series.

For starters, you can't choose the blur strength as you could before. Instead, you can use one of the few bokeh highlights shapes - circles, hearts, swirl or discs.

Huawei Mate 20 12MP Portraits with different bokeh effects

The subject separation is very good - in fact it's among the best we've seen in a while. The different effects are also a departure from what we're used to seeing, and we found them cool and a breath of fresh air.

Huawei Mate 20 12MP Telephoto Portraits with different bokeh effects

Then there are Portrait Lighting effects, which have tolerable-but-not-great subject separation and generally aren't our cup of tea.

Huawei Mate 20 12MP Portraits with different Lightning effects

Finally, in addition to those blur and/or lighting effects, you can also use various skin and face beautifications, but we didn't dig deep there.

Aperture mode

The Mate 20 also features the so-called Aperture Mode. It lets you do post-shot re-focusing and simulates apertures in the f/0.95-f/16 range. It can be used for both human and non-human subjects and does well with the subject isolation even with more complex shapes.

F/1 • F/2.4 • F/4 • F/6.3

F/1 • F/2.8 • F/3.5 • F/5.6

Selfies

The Mate 20 feature a 24MP f/2.0 camera with fixed focus for selfies at the front, borrowed from the P20 series. It can do portraits with various effects as usual. Its performance isn't nearly as spectacular as the high pixel count might suggest, though.

We'd trade half of those megapixels for autofocus any time, or at least for a focus sweet spot that's further from the phone, because as things stand right now, you need to shoot your face from pretty close for it to be in sharp focus. If you do manage to stay within the camera's fixed focus sweet spot, the level of detail is quite amazing. Colors are faithfully represented, and dynamic range is good for a selfie camera.

Huawei Mate 20 24MP selfies

There is AI HDR turned on by default for the selfies and we strongly recommend leaving it on. It does a splendid job in recovering detail in the highlights.

AI HDR • no HDR

The front camera has the same Portrait mode as the main one, but the subject separation is far inferior. You can see ears and hair have gone missing on some of the shots. The cool blur effects have made it to the selfie portrait mode, too, which is nice.

Huawei Mate 20 24MP Selfie Portraits with different bokeh effects

And you can, of course, use Portrait Lighting effects, if those are your thing, but with the poor subject separation they have very limited applications.

Huawei Mate 20 24MP Selfie Portraits with different Lightning effects

Video recording

The Huawei Mate 20 isn't introducing any new shooting modes over the P20 series, which means still no 4K at 60fps. You have a choice between the h.264 and h.265 codecs.

There is an always-on electronic stabilization available in every mode but the 1080p/60fps one.

You can shoot video with each camera in any resolution and use the 0.6x, 1x, and 2x triggers as you prefer. Oddly, we found out that in 1080p at 60fps the 2x footage is not from the 2x camera, but is digitally zoomed from the normal one.

The 4K footage of either camera is average - it lacks sharpness big time. The resolved detail isn't terrible, but we've still seen mid-rangers do better. The colors sometimes are washed out, but the contrast and the dynamic range are pretty decent.

The always-on electronic stabilization might be responsible for this softness, but we can't be sure as there is no way to disable it.

Disappointingly, the 4K videos we shot with the wide-angle camera have a frame rate of only 22-24fps instead of the regular 30fps.

The closeup videos are quite good, though. The Mate 20 has spectacular EIS and even videos shot at night look great. The recorded audio is stereo with 192kbps bitrate and thanks to the high bitrate you will get excellent quality even at a concert. The video below is from the Mate 20 Pro, but it is representative of what you'd get with the Mate 20, too.

The 1080p footage looks sharper and these are among the best 1080p videos we've seen. The resolved detail is great, as are the colors, contrast, and the dynamic range.

The 1080p videos at 60fps are less detailed than the 30fps ones, but are otherwise a close match to the 30fps ones.

As usual, we've provided samples straight out of the camera for you to download - 2160p@30fps normal(10s, 36MB), 2160p@30fps 2x zoom (10s, 35MB), 2160p@30fps ultra-wide (11s, 25MB), 1080p@30fps normal (10s, 15MB), 1080p@30fps 2x zoom (10s, 15MB), 1080p@30fps ultra-wide (10s, 14MB), 1080p@60fps normal (10s, 23MB), 1080p@60fps 2x zoom (10s, 24MB), and 1080p@60fps ultra-wide (11s, 23MB).

Finally, you can use our Video Compare Tool to see how the Huawei Mate 20 cameras stack against others when it comes to video capture.

2160p: Huawei Mate 20 against the Mate 20 Pro the Pixel 3 in our Video compare tool

2160p: Huawei Mate 20 Ultra Wide against the Mate 20 Pro Ultra Wide and Mate 20 Regular