DxOMark has completed its review of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra’s camera (using an Exynos-powered unit) and the results aren’t good – the overall score is only 121. Not only is it this low, but that’s less than the 126 points awarded to the Galaxy S20 Ultra from a year ago. Note: The S20 Ultra has been retested with version 4 of the review process, so the scores should be comparable.
Let’s look at the ventilation. The 2021 model received 128 points for photography, 76 for zoom and 98 for video. The old phone matched the score of 128 photos, but is ahead in the zoom (88) and video (106) categories.
What didn’t go well? Well in the zoom test the ultra wide camera performed well, the problem was on the other end – both telephoto modules did not live up to expectations. The S21 Ultra is barely one point ahead of the vanilla Note20 in overall score and a few points ahead of zoom.
According to DxOMark’s estimate, that 10x periscope and the additional mid-range zoom module aren’t worth much compared to the original zoom setup on the S21 Ultra. As for the vanilla Note20, it only had the 64 MP module with up to 3x digital zoom.
Moving on to the video score, it is on par with the affordable Pixel 4a (98), although only 4K / 60 fps mode has been tested (8K and 4K / 30 fps have not been tested). Video stabilization in particular was an issue (and why 8K wasn’t tested).
You can read the full DxOMark review for more details on why the flagship Galaxy received such a low score. If you want a second opinion, check out our S21 Ultra review. We also have an S21 Ultra vs. Note20 Ultra camera shootout.
