Samsung Galaxy S21+ 5G review

Video recording

Little has changed on the video recording front this year. The Galaxy S20 generation introduced 8K recording, and that's still the highest available mode on the S21 trio, the Plus included. A bump to 30fps would have been nice, but that's not available - it's still limited to 8K@24fps for some odd reason.

The S21 Ultra gets 4K60 out of all of its cameras, but that doesn't apply to the other two phones. Here, only the main cam and the ultra-wide one can do 4K60. Technically, if you go through a specific set of UI hoops, you can get 4K60 at a magnification resembling 3x, but that's sourced from the main camera, and it's not the real deal.

The default codec for videos is h.264, but you can switch to the more efficient h.265 in the app menu. 8K is encoded using h.265 regardless of that setting. HDR10+ capture is also possible, a format you can then display on the phone itself, but also on a wide selection of compatible TVs.

Pro video mode opens up some more frame rate possibilities - 4K and 1080p at 24fps for that cinematic look, as well as 1080p at 120fps, the non-slow-mo variety. Naturally, this mode allows for a lot more creative control and lets you tweak image parameters as well as monitor and adjust mic gain and direction of pick up.

As was the case on the previous generation phones, the 1x zoom level is handled by the main 12MP camera. The ultrawide cam does the 0.5x magnification, predictably, while 8K and all zoom levels starting at 2x and beyond come from the 64MP camera.

We remain convinced that capturing 8K (bitrate is 80Mbps) on your phone is overkill unless, maybe, you plan to use parts of the frame in a 4K timeline. The footage coming out of the Galaxy S21+ is somewhat usable, but suffers from compression artifacts and is simply not all that sharp and detailed. It looks good in PR material, but not so much in reality.

We typically stick to 4K30 for our video recording and the footage captured by the S21 (38Mbps) is detailed albeit uncharacteristically noisy in the darker regions and even in the sky. Colors are generally pleasing, although, as usual, the hues of the skies can be polarizing - some people don't like Samsung's more saturated and cyan-ish rendition. Dynamic range in excellent, no worries there.

4K60 isn't nearly as good. Despite a relatively high bit rate (70Mbps) image quality is notably worse than 4K30 - we're talking less detail, strong sharpening halos, fairly prominent noise.

The ultra wide cam leaves a good impression with its video quality. It does have its fair share of noise, but there's also very good detail as extreme ultra-wides go. Dynamic range is also respectable given the circumstances.

The telephoto performance doesn't leave us wanting either. Zoomed-in to 3x, some noise can still be spotted, but it's not obtrusive and some very intricate detail is being captured. Colors are very pleasing, the wide dynamic range is a nice touch too.

Stabilization is available in all modes, and 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. 8K footage is very smooth and panning presents no issues.

4K30 from the main cam is even smoother when you walk, though going in and out of a pan makes for somewhat abrupt shifts. If you're just pointing the phone in one direction and not moving, it will stay remarkable stable too.

The ultra wide's stabilized 4K capture is about the same as the main cam's when walking, perhaps even a little smoother when foot hits ground. We're also not seeing the less than ideal panning transitions here.

At 3x zoom, the footage is visibly stabler than what you'd get without electronic stabilization, but there is still some fine shake left - very good, not amazing.

Selfie video capture is a strong selling point for high end Galaxies, with autofocus and 4K60 capability making for a standout set of features. You get excellent detail in 4K30, less so in 4K60, and some noise is present too, particularly in the shadow areas. Stabilization is ever so slightly shakier than we'd like, and maybe that has to with the narrowed field of view which requires you to stretch your arm out a bit to get wider coverage. Overall though, pretty great selfie video performance.

Here's a glimpse of how the Samsung Galaxy S21+ compares to rivals in our Video compare tool. Head over there for the complete picture.

Samsung Galaxy S21+ against the iPhone 12 Pro and the OnePlus 8 Pro in our Video compare tool