Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra review

Video recording, daylight

The Galaxy S20 Ultra has a host of video recording options. Headlining those is the 8K video recording capability (at 24fps), but there's also 4K30 from all cameras, as well as 4K60 from the main camera.

You can record zoomed-in footage at 2x, which comes off the main camera. You get 4K30 there, as well as 4K60, and 1080p in both frame rates. Going into 4x zoom and beyond, it's the actual telephoto camera that takes over the 30fps modes in both 4K and 1080p. 60fps is also available if you switch to 4x first and then change the resolution and frame rate, but the zoom trees disappear if you change settings first. Seeing how the 4x 60fps footage is, again, actually captured by the main cam and it's best not to look at it, Samsung is effectively trying to prevent you from doing zoomed-in 60fps by little weird UI methods. It's another of the app's oh-so-charming idiosyncrasies.

The ultra wide-angle camera, having a field-of-view you can't replicate with any other module, has the 60fps properly grayed out in the menu.

Stabilization is available in all modes. That includes 8K24 and 4K60, which is nice. You can also disable it if you wish, which is also nice as some makers don't let you do that.

Then there's the Super steady Mode. Back when it was introduced on the S10s, it was only available on the ultra wide-angle camera. Then when the Note10s came out, Samsung made it possible to shoot Super steady-ly with the main camera as well, meaning autofocus. That option was later ported back to the S10.

Well, you can get Super steady on the S20 Ultra as well, and there's the familiar tree toggle, leading you to believe it works in the same fashion - three trees for the ultra-wide Super steady, and two trees for the main camera Super steady. You would be wrong. Both use the ultra-wide camera, only the second one is cropped in further. Grrr.

The selfie camera is more honest in what it does - 4K and 1080p, 60fps and 30fps, autofocus, stabilization in 30fps modes only.

You have an option to record HDR10+ video, which you can then view on compatible devices (like, say, the S20 Ultra itself) or upload to YouTube. Additionally, you can set the Ultra to use the space-saving h.265 codec as opposed to the default h.264. 8K is encoded in h.265 regardless.

Okay, how about that 8K, then? Well, for one, it's big. At 80Mbps, you're looking at 600MB for each minute of footage, so it better be worth it. It isn't.

The significant crop - we can live with, but the level of detail inside the footage isn't anything special and doesn't offer any meaningful advantage over 4K. This isn't a surprise, given our experience with stills out of that 108MP sensor in nominal resolution. And what we're looking at in 8K is the center 7680x4320px portion of it - with 9px squares of each primary color. So they're big enough and far enough apart not to be able to provide minute detail like what you could potentially get out of a classic Bayer array with a 1px pitch. Not that we're saying a classic Bayer array is feasible at this scale, or that it should even be attempted, or that anyone ever asked for 8K out of their smartphones. But we digress.

Returning to the realm of usable video, the main camera's 4K30 footage (38Mbps) is quite good. It offers competitive levels of detail, pleasing lively colors, and wide dynamic range while remaining nicely contrasty. 4K60 (70Mbps) ups the sharpening a few notches, which is annoying from up close, but isn't an issue from normal viewing distances. It's otherwise identical to 4K30.

1080p30 (14Mbps) and 1080p60 (21Mbps) are, to our eyes, exactly alike in terms of quality, and it's excellent quality indeed.

Before we delve into zooming in, let's zoom out first. The ultra wide-angle footage is nearly identical to what you'd get out of the Note10, for example, despite the different hardware. That's not a bad thing, and both 4K and 1080 videos are very good. The ultra-wide is also nicely color-matched to the main shooter which hasn't always been the case.

Cautiously starting to climb the zoom ladder at 2x, we're seeing very decent 4K30, but still not quite as good as what you'd get out of a dedicated 2x module. The processing is laid back and natural which makes it rather appealing. 4K60, on the other hand, dials up the sharpening to 11 making for a very overprocessed look. 1080p looks nearly identical in both frame rates, and while it too is a bit strong on the sharpening, it's not such a bad offender.

Get to 4x zoom and the telephoto cam kicks in producing some excellent footage in both 4K and 1080p at 30fps. Getting it properly stable is no easy task, however, and even on a sturdy tripod, you'd better not have much wind around you. Much to our surprise, 10x zoom is also more than just usable at 1080p, while the upscaling needed to get to 4K makes it less impressive on a per-pixel level.

The Ultra's electronic stabilization on its main cam will stay planted in one direction if you're staying in one spot and just pointing your phone somewhere, and it will do pans nicely without abrupt motions in the beginning and end. It will, however, let some shake from walking make it to the end video and a tendency to hunt for focus when walking on occasion may be annoying.

The ultra wide-angle cam's footage suffers from none of that - the walking shake is done away with thanks to the much wider focal length, while there can't be focus hunting if the focus is fixed, right? The Super steady in its wider mode is, well, steady, but then the regular ultra-wide footage is already that steady, why bother? Meanwhile, the cropped-in mode is so zoomed-in that it's tighter than the main cam and is way too soft.

The handheld 4x and 5x footage is a bit shaky, there's no getting around that.

The Galaxy S20 Ultra turned in an excellent performance in selfie videos as well. Videos are nice and detailed, skin tones are on point, and the phone handles backlighting well. The stabilization in 30fps irons out shake with ease too but crops the view enough to make you want to use a selfie stick to get better coverage. The 60fps modes get more in the frame but are pretty shaky. Stick it is then.

Video recording, low light

We don't always test real-world video recording in low light (charts for the Video compare tool are a different matter), but for an Ultra it's well warranted. While we did expect it to perform better than the competition on account of having some of the biggest sensors in the industry, we were still quite amazed by the results.

The Galaxy S20 Ultra is able to capture clean and detailed footage with wide dynamic range and good colors on all its cameras in light conditions where other smartphones would have long called it quits. We used a Galaxy Note10+ for comparison and we shot in the 0.5x to 4x zoom range at two different light levels with both side by side. We confined this test to just 4K30fps, as we consider it the most sensible mode for video capture at this time.

You can head over here for a dedicated article on that comparison, complete with screengrabs from the videos if you're not keep on watching the clips themselves. Our findings here come straight from that piece.

First up, we shot on the Ultra and Note10+ at dusk, handheld, on a small rig that allowed us to record simultaneously as the light was changing quickly and shooting one after the other would have given the first phone an advantage. Well, we could have done the Note first to give it a standing chance.

To be fair, the Note10+ almost keeps up in these conditions when it comes to 1x footage. The Ultra's low-light videos out of the main cam are still slightly sharper and more detailed, but dynamic range is much better on the new phone.

There's hardly any contest when you zoom out to 0.5x. The Ultra's ultra wide cam's bigger sensor makes a huge difference and footage looks really good - while there is some noise, there's a lot of detail as well, while the Note10+'s clip has already turned into mush. Once more, dynamic range is superior on the Ultra as well.

On to 2x, where the Note's actual 2x lets it keep up with Ultra that needs to crop in from its main cam for this magnification. This one we'd call a tie in terms of detail, though we'd still prefer the Ultra for dynamic range.

At 4x zoom, the Ultra crushes the Note10+ which is to be expected given that the old phone's optics max out at 2x. What caught us by surprise was just how good the Ultra footage is in isolation, not just in comparison to the optically handicapped Note.

As it got even darker, we put out the tripod in preparation for the hyperlapses, but we figured we'd shoot some regular video while at it. The gap between the video quality out of the Ultra and the Note widened with the Ultra still producing likeable footage at 1x, where the Note's is just barely usable.

At 0.5x zoom, the Ultra's footage has indeed gotten noisier in this light than just 10minutes prior, but it's still decently usable, while the Note is falling apart. At 2x, things get messy on the Note, while the Ultra keeps its composure - it's not super sharp, but it's way better than the Note. Zoomed in at 4x, you can tell basic shapes from the Note's footage, while the Ultra maintains some semblance of detail.

On top of the overall quality improvements, the Ultra gets a new mode - Night hyperlapse. It takes long exposures, long enough to create light trails, which then make up the frames of the video. The long exposures and the fact that the rate is a minute of shooting for a second of resulting video, mean a tripod is a must (or at least a beanbag, you do you). The Note10 doesn't have night hyperlapses, just regular ones (which the ultra does too), and they're nowhere as good as the Ultra's in low light. The Note could potentially get this in a software update, but as of now the Ultra wins hands down.

Overall, we were really impressed with the Galaxy S20 Ultra's capabilities in low-light video recording. We're still not sure if we're €500 or so impressed and it's debatable just how important low-light video recording is in the first place. But if it's your thing, the Ultra will undoubtedly deliver.

Here's a glimpse of how the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G against the iPhone 11 Pro Max and the Note10+ in our Video compare tool

Our review findings have been updated since the initial publication to reflect our deeper and more detailed understanding and assessment of the phone's video recording capabilities.