[Intro]
In this video I will put the 4K camera of the Google Pixel up against the 4K video
camera on the iPhone 7+.
Both of these flagships have top of the line cameras so no matter what phone you buy it’s
going to look pretty darn good.
But there are strengths and weaknesses with each one.
I’ll be highlighting those throughout the video.
At the end of this video, it’s your job to tell me which camera you liked best in
the comments.
Since the best camera really boils down to personal preference.
This extreme low-light shot is taken from the World Trade Center Memorial.
Each image looks pretty identical until I finish panning up to the top of the building
and the Pixel decides to up the sensor sensitivity, brightening the sky, while the iPhone keeps
the sky completely black.
So the sky looks better on the iPhone, but the darkness also gives the building a little
less detail.
Looking at the same shot during daylight, I feel like the colors are true to life and
nearly identical on both phones.
In each corner of this video you’ll see that I have the resolution and the bit rate
of each camera.
The higher the bit rate number is, the more detail and information the camera image will
have to display.
So it’s important to note.
I’ll do a front camera test really quick.
Both phones are filming in 1080p right now.
The bit rate is also still listed in the corner.
With the front camera the pixel is doing a much better job of keeping the sky black and
maintaining detail in the building.
I’m really glad that Apply finally decided to upgrade their front camera resolution from
720 to 1080p.
It really was a joke that we had to wait this long to finally get some real resolution with
that front camera.
Neither phone appears to have any stabilization on the front camera, but that’s mostly typical
across all smartphones.
The Pixel does appear to do a slightly better job of maintaining detail in the shadows,
but like I said before, for the most part the cameras are pretty identical during daylight.
The low-light shots are where we start to see some major differentiation between the
cameras.
The iPhone has that true black sky which I really like, but the Pixel does have a bit
more detail, even if there is a little extra noise in the image.
The water and the Brooklyn Bridge stand out really well.
This particular daylight shot looks a little more colorful on the iPhone side of things.
The color of the bridge stands out just a bit more.
The Pixel image is a little more flat.
Remember that this is the dead of night.
The dancing green dot that you see on both cameras is either aliens or just a light reflection
off the inner lenses of the camera.
The next big differentiation between the cameras is the rear image stabilization during video.
The Pixel has electronic stabilization – or EIS.
The iPhone has hardware stabilization – or OIS.
In this shot the Pixel is trying to use software to stabilize all the little lights you see
in the buildings while I walk, and it’s not working out too well.
The EIS is enabled at 4K, but the lights are still pretty jittery.
For this segment I change both of my camera settings to 1080p to see if the stabilization
would get any better on the pixel and I still prefer the image coming from the iPhone 7+
as far as stabilization goes, at night anyway.
Hardware stabilization will usually always win over electronic stabilization.
It is incredibly difficult for the Pixel to stabilize all of those little lights at night,
but when I switch to this 4 story tall little ripped alien Hulk baby, the Pixel image appears
to be even more stabilized than the iPhone.
So EIS has its strengths and weaknesses, but I still prefer the hardware stabilization
that is OIS.
But luckily, everyone gets to decide for themselves what their personal preference is.
One feature that the iPhone 7+ has is an extra camera on the back for zooming in on stuff.
I’ll be testing this out on the Statue of Liberty that you can see from lower Manhattan.
Zooming in all the way on both cell phones takes a minute to focus during the night,
but you can see that the iPhone can get a lot closer than the Pixel does with that extra
lens.
During the day you can see a little better how well the image detail is preserved during
the zoom.
Look at the water clarity and that little sailboat next to the Statue…and then the
people on jet skies.
That zoom is a really cool feature.
Just for reference, I’ll zoom back out again so you can get a perspective of what the phones
are really capable of.
4K footage with that kind of zoom is incredible.
Here is the last day and night comparison in Time Square before I jump into the close
up shots and slow motion.
Like before, the camera image is almost identical on both phones until I start panning up.
The iPhone can’t decide what to do with the bright sky so it darkens the whole image.
It does this twice on me.
It’s not just a onetime fluke.
The Pixel completely washes out the sky as I pan up.
This is a difficult situation for any camera so it’s interesting to see how they both
behave.
The nighttime shot does equally well on both phones.
There is enough light here so both phones are able to preserve the blackness of the
sky.
The Pixel does glitch a bit during the pan down and this is probably due to the software
stabilization trying to figure out what I’m doing with the phone.
Here is a quick close up shot of the metal grate on the Brooklyn Bridge.
The wires are in focus and the street below is pretty well blurred on both phones.
After you watch the slow motion footage I’ll be leaving a poll question in the upper corner
of the video that you can answer and tell me which phone you think is best.
Then you can tell me why you thought that phone was best in the comments below this
video.
So here’s the slow motion footage.
Each phone can do 240 frames per second at 720p.
You can see that the Pixel does have a slightly higher bit rate than the iPhone 7 which is
a good thing, but let’s see if that actually matters in this case.
The detail is pretty similar between both the images, but if we pause the video and
zoom in on this random person in blue, we can see that the Pixel is capturing sharper
frames than the iPhone.
Look at the face and the reflection of the bars inside this window.
So now tell me what you think.
Which camera is best?
Let me know in the comments.
I post more camera image comparisons on my Twitter and Instagram and I have a whole playlist
of videos like this comparing every major smartphone that has come out in the past year.
Thanks a ton for watching.
I’ll see you around.