yes I was an iPhone 14 pro Max user but only really for its video quality and since its
release I have been using the s23 ultra but this isn't like all those other hey I'm switching I'm
switching videos that have that cringe thumbnail to match and you're probably thinking wow this
guy's just going to go back to his iPhone after he publishes this video right well that isn't
the case here for me at least I think the iPhone 14 pro Max is pretty garbage actually compared to
its predecessor so the 13 Pro had better battery life this is buggy as anything too so I don't like
it in fact it's going in the garbage no well not actually in the garbage I'll keep it just
for camera comparisons so the s23 Ultra Samsung finally ditched that turd of a chipset their own
in-house chipsets the exynos I was never a fan of them and the s22 ultra for me was played with
bugs and lag thermal throttling terrible battery performance and even after like 14 ridiculous
amount of patches or something it was still bad and now I'll let you know my experience here after
a month with the s23 ultra now I do have this olive green color which at times kind of looks
like gray I like it it's a little different so very good build quality it's a large phone it's
a solid phone it's heavy okay it has 234 grams at about nine millimeters the thickness metal
frame all around the outside and the screen is covered with that Gorilla Glass vectus 2.
and does it scratch well yes it does now I've just been placing the phone in my pocket with
no screen protector on it because it didn't even have one in the box which is a bit of a shame and
I've got a few they're very hard to see on camera here I've got a few faint scratches there it is
one there and I can actually just feel it with my finger I didn't even know how this happened
because I've not put my keys in my pocket or anything silly like that now the squared off
corners and bottom doesn't make it uncomfortable to hold now the stylus I barely kind of use this
myself apart from maybe just writing down a few little notes and a reminder to myself and
the latency of this pen it is very very good the accuracy you can see we've got the hover there
and everything comes out really quick if your stylus user of course then this is the phone to
get the flagship to get so we've got a 6.8 inch 1440p screen very very nice ltpo Tech and what
I'm doing now if you swipe down the toggles and you get everything there notifications if I did
this on the s22 ultra exynos version it would lag for me I'm not joking it would be really
that bad and it's not doing that at all so one UI 5.1 performance is fantastic I'm just summarizing
here because I know everyone knows all the specs of everything so I tend to run my s23 ultra in the
dark mode just to save a little on the battery I force the motion smoothness on to Adaptive
but you can put on to standard at 60 hertz if you want now I don't see it dropping down that
refresh rate with the ltpo screen I don't notice any lag I don't notice it chopping down it has
been very good so you've got all those typical settings there now the brightness does top out
and Peak at 1750 nits it's super bright and here in direct sunlight you can make out that screen
just fine for your text messages and everything you need to do as for battery life well I know
they get around six to eight hours of screen on time and it is excellent you don't have to just
listen to my claims here the battery life I'm sure there's a countless other videos that also
will tell you that the s23 ultra thanks to that Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has fantastic battery life I
can make it through a full day now the thermal throttling that I was originally seeing I dip
in about 30 percent performance of the phone now on the latest patch which is the April
patch that I got you can see it's 75 percent now this step in performance you're not going
to really notice even the lowest scored Loop here of this 20 minute stress test is still
very good performance now gaming you will not see any kind of real difference but is it the
fastest no other phones don't throttle as bad as the s23 ultra the loudspeakers are really great
on the s23 ultra I don't see anyone complaining about them here's a sample of them and 100 volume
over to the camera so this is the front-facing 12 megapixel camera it's got autofocus and what
you're looking at now is the portrait video mode so it's blurring out the background and it makes
it look like you're using say a DSLR with a really decent lens until you look at like the
top of my here some areas you can see that it's not quite perfect but they have improved this a
lot it's very good now the Audio I want to talk a little bit about that I've got waves crashing in
the background here and it's doing a really decent job so the audio bit range 256 kilobits per second
really high quality microphones and I just love this audio quality from Samsung at the moment I
think they have improved it compared to the s22 ultra that I had the exynos version and we're
shooting on 4K here with this portrait video you can also do it with the main rear camera as well
and stabilization has really improved too I think compared to previous models probably down to the
fact that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is really helping out here so this is the ultra wide go over to our
main camera now and panning around see it's looking pretty good I don't really see a lot
of that panning jutter that I used to get a lot of and complain about so this is the three times
now and then of course we've got that 10 times periscopic camera so I just use that to zoom in
and that's only a 10 megapixel I don't find the quality of that to be absolutely amazing it's
it's a weaker camera there and let's go back to the main camera and jogger here too to show you
that stabilization how really good it is the only thing I have noticed that sometimes when
you pan if you want to do a nice smooth pan there is a bit of lag sometimes when you start panning
and it kind of quickly catches up I don't know if it's going to happen now but I
have noticed that sometimes and of course the ultra wide that 12 megapixel one does
use electronic image stabilization really good video quality here with Samsung's set of cameras
and this is now 8K which I often do use but normally with a tripod and a disable image
stabilization because image stabilization crops in quite aggressively and you're really only getting
a quality that I think is about 6K upscale to 8K because of that crop because it's using the
electronic image stabilization now it does look very good and you get more detail and a little
bit more sharpness then just using the plain 4K but it is only the main 200 megapixel camera
that does support 8K you can't swap over then to the ultra wide the zoom camera any of those at
all and I have been using some of the 8K footage I've recorded on the s23 ultra here for some of
my videos for example this e-bike video here that I'm showing you of this angry yes that's the name
of it almost sounds like Angry M20 e-bike and that was all shot on the Samsung Galaxy S 23 Ultra so I
am impressed with the quality especially when you're down side down scale sorry 8K to 4K it
makes that 4K look a lot sharper and almost the same kind of level of sharpness as my Sony a6400
again it takes stunning photos you bet you it can this is the ultra wide this shot a very clear day
here definitely helped out and yes if you crop in you can see a little bit of edge blurring
from the ultra wide lens now this shot here is the main camera the 200 megapixel sensor and
I think it looks fantastic captured all those colors of the flower not only that look at the
detail and lovely natural background blur too from it this shot here is a dog just enjoying
the water obviously but it's the 10 times optical zoom camera and I thought it came out all right
but what I have noticed with the 10 times Optical camera 10 megapixels it does have a
lot of background noise as I crop in and zoom in now the shot of this very cheeky pigeon you can
see all that noise in the background which kind of ruins this shot a little bit this now is the three
times camera this other shot of that same pigeon portrait shots can be a little hit and miss if you
zoom in and take a look at the background blur there there is a bit of noise and the stitching
around my girl's hair not amazing however other photos can come out just fine like this shot
I've also been using the s23 ultra to take a lot of photos of some of the products I'm testing
out as I'm out and about I don't have to take my heavy DSLR camera I can just pop a shot like this
one for example now this new latest April patch is meant to fix the focus focus issues like this
for example I tapped on those wireless microphones but it focused instead on you can see those olives
in the background not the product so that's why it's a little hit and miss but it's still kind of
happening especially in low light even with this apparent autofocus fix having that 10 times Zoom
Optical camera is great for sightseeing so here in Barcelona I decided I'd zoom in get some more
details here and you can see without cropping in the photo looks fine okay but if you do crop with
that 10 megapixel sensor the noise the noise again creeps into it kind of ruining the shot
how's the HDR performance well this is the main camera and I think it does come out very good
you can see yes there is a bit of noise looking at the left hand side on that boat but overall
not a bad shot even though some people did say it looks a little too dark I happen to like it
for me the biggest letdown is this front facing camera it's great that it's got autofocus it
does have 4K support but I just found the HDR and even with the new patch it's still
the same it's still like this it will often just overdo it so the HDR here didn't capture
that Sun at all it's just Overexposed it the rear camera does a much better job
and sadly with our night mode I'm still seeing the issues that I've seen before this is the
latest patch this is the one that came out in April even though they're still saying it's
like a March patch I don't believe it's the big camera update but you can see the xiaomi 13 Pro
with its one inch sensor outperforms clearly outperforms an s23 ultra captures more detail
better exposure just look where I've highlighted those areas there you can see with the plants it
is looking a lot better with the xiaomi 13 Pro this is an area where xiaomi does lag behind
especially when you take shots like this okay the night sky you can see there's this texture
there there's this noise to the sky that I don't like and it looks a bit purplish I like my night
shots to actually look like night shots this is more becoming like something that's like a dawn
shot or almost daylight how bright it is so the brightness is great there's still just so much
room for improvement I feel with low light photos from Samsung and there's a lot of things I haven't
talked about that this phone does otherwise this video would be 20 30 minutes long or something of
course I've got the stylus support if you need a flag shirt with a stylus then hey this is the one
to get you've got all the software optimizations with one UI with the stylus with the multi-tasking
and then we've got a video out they're desktop mode 2 and fast USB USB 3.1 transfers fantastic
better life is very decent charging time is meh you know it's not really that good it's just under
an hour and you know in 2023 is that acceptable I think it is just but really they should jump
on to 120 watt charging or even faster if they can would be really good the wireless charging
as well is even slower there too but it's not you know it's not a deal breaker not at all
screen's great I love it I I don't mind the slight curvature to the edges of that build quality it's
all there it's got a lot going through it for it and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for me is the big game
changer here because if you had the exynos version of you got the s20 22 Ultra exynos we got screwed
over then you definitely want to get this now if you've got the Snapdragon 8gen one version it's
not worthwhile I don't think it's worthwhile to upgrade and even if you've got a kind of last gen
phone that's still pretty good I wouldn't upgrade either now let's talk about the uh depreciation
on this model here and the previous ones it's absolutely terrible with Samsung and this is where
Apple's good and no I'm not an apple Fanboy at all but the iPhones hold their value so much better
and Samsung's set to just really drop that value down especially with their terrible trade-ins they
give on these models now so I can't wait to sell this in a year's time I'm joking here of course
for only 600 euros or trade it in for 500 euros absolutely terrible depreciation that's one thing
I hope that Samsung can do something about by just offering better trade-in values when the s24 ultra
comes out so there we go that is my thoughts my story my one month later review you could say of
the s23 ultra I'll be keeping it and it definitely does get a big thumbs up from me but I just want
to see Samsung squeeze out the maximum potential out of those cameras with some firmware updates