hey guys this is the b20 and LG says it's the perfect phone for content
creation so the video team and I Dan and Adam we took it out into the field and
put it through a bunch of really difficult content creation scenarios we
tested it against the pixel XL the iPhone 7 plus and Samsung's GS 7
first up we looked at photography so Adam what exactly did you do to get
these shots so we took each phone out around the streets of San Francisco and
real world scenarios we use the default camera app set everything to auto
including HDR because that's kind of how most people use it and use the native
resolutions on the cameras so we're going to be looking at three different
criteria in these photos of color clarity and range the first one we're
going to do is color and if we look at this example right here of this basic
brick wall shot you can see that the LG has a pretty good color range you know
it seems very accurate especially to my eye I switch over to the pixel and
things get washed out just a little bit but it's still pretty accurate the
iPhone has a deeper color gamut but it also comes across as being very
flamboyant enough yeah and strong yeah and what look what's happening with the
s7 yeah the gs-7 is really washed out kind of it has a bluish tint not very
pleasing on first blush especially compared to the rest of the photos so
I'm looking at these and the iPhone looks most impressive but that doesn't
necessarily mean it's the most accurate no I mean they push their color range
really heavily but I mean if people are going to be posting these to Instagram
you're using a lot of filters anyway and typically I wouldn't want such saturated
colors in my image so that's the brick wall what else did you shoot let's check
out a little scenario here with the vines and if we focus in on the green
colors they all hold the greens pretty well but if we look at the stone brick
wall the v20 is actually coming out a little
warmer as opposed to the pixel which in most of the other scenarios the pixel
actually defaulted to a little bit warmer of a white balance yeah yes I was
interesting there once again the iPhone is really bumping up the colors and the
gs-7 just seems really washed out especially in the highlights so I'll say
when I was there looking at it the v20 still once again had the most accurate
color range out of all of them right and so we have to remember that we're
looking at everything them from the context of content creation and with
content creation you want to have the most even baseline results so that
you can do more work in post-production exactly that's the idea so the last
scenario is a little wider shot of the street in San Francisco and this is a
good example of how each phone treats the white balance if we look at the v20
it's pretty accurate maybe even a little on the cooler side we switch over to the
pixel and it's definitely favoring the warmer tones which i've seen time and
time again in these photos we switch over the iPhone and it is really bumping
up those colors especially the blue and the distance on the billboard and then
we look at the GSM in it and it's a little muted I'm actually surprised that
it's not giving us a little more contrast here and I'm surprised by how
warm the iPhone is so do you think that's an accurate representation of the
actual scene that that is definitely the least accurate representation I've seen
yeah in that shot I think the v20 is the best because I think it has a lot of
punch but also it doesn't look like weird things are happening on white
balance so taking in consideration the color reproduction of the white balance
I would give the b20 the lead here so all right next up is the sharpness test
so we're basically going to be looking at the clarity of each image again
unfortunately this is the spot where the v20 falls on its face I was very
surprised I even came back to you and borrowed your phone the next day I can't
believe these results I'm seeing like I just wanted to double check my work and
we'll kind of see in the photos here so we have this interesting little street
scene with a little bit of graffiti and if we zoom in on the bottom here we can
kind of see that the acorns and the leaves and twigs kind of sitting in the
street that's not very clear that's not very InFocus is yeah not very sharp at
all it looks like an impressionist painting yeah so we switch over to the
pixel oh my god that is night and day difference you see
every stone every stick even whatever that is maybe some gum but let's move on
to the iPhone which if we zoom in is not very clear either I mean it's not a
disaster like the feet 20 yeah but at the same time I would not give
great markings in the clarity range the gs-7 actually stands up pretty well yeah
is the pixel in this one so next up we have a macro shot of this big colorful
leaf and this is an area where the b20 actually keeps its own against the rest
of the phones if we zoom in here on this corner we can kind of see the the
individual grooves of the beef we switch over to the pixel and it's actually
pretty close you know but once again you can see the the different grooves in
here the iPhone 7 plus loses a little bit but it's actually hold up pretty
well and the gs-7 once again is still pretty sharp and what I think is
happening here in one aspect is that a lot of these phone manufacturers are
assuming that you're taking a lot of food photography uh-huh you know things
that are up close so it's kind of favoring the clarity at a close range
rather than further away but in this last test it's kind of a big deal
especially if you want to take a big scenic shot of you know the Bay Area in
the Bay Bridge right here this is the b20 and if we zoom in on the East Bay
over here you know we can kind of make out some of the buildings and and just
because we know what those are those are the cranes over at the Oakland docks but
we switch over to the pixel and we can see not only the bigger cranes but also
the smaller cranes lined up decided we can see a lot more housing especially up
in the hills I mean it's it's definitely night and day against the the b20 it's
such a great length so I'm looking at these two photos and again the v20 looks
like an impressionist painting where the pixel just looks a lot sharper so why do
you think the v20 lost so much clarity in the jump from the pre-production unit
to the final unit that we're actually testing so it seems like they're doing a
lot of work in post to get rid of noise LG must think that a lot of people are
going to shoot in we're light environments so they turned
up the noise suppression 211 and really hampered down on any sort of sharpness
in these photos because that's kind of the balance when when you take out the
noise in the grain you actually take a huge hit to the clarity and the
sharpness of an image so yes while technically the pixel has more grain I
would prefer more clarity and more sharpness in my image noise in an image
does not love me so this is an area where the b20 just Falls really flat and
I actually give it the the worst rating out of all of them so now it's time to
bring up the old histogram and look at dynamic range so what are we looking at
here so the left part of a histogram represents all of the dark areas of the
image where the right part of the histogram represents all of the light
parts of the image the idea is to get the photo between the two edges so that
you're not actually losing any information so let's dig into the
examples here we have this chain-link fence that's actually underneath the bay
bridge if we look at the LGV 20 there's not a ton of information in the darks
and the lights it's actually pretty neutral we switch over to the pixel and
you can see there's a little bit more of a bump at the highlights here to
indicate that because of the wider field of view we kind of picked up this sign
over here but once again it's not it's not hitting either end which is nice we
jump over to the iPhone and it's doing things a little differently and the gs-7
is actually pretty close to where the b20 is so just based on what we're
seeing in the histograms can you pick a favorite photo so as a content creator
once again you you want the most information available to then edit the
photo with so in a flat image like the v20 here I can introduce contrast
whereas the iPhone it's already introducing contrast for me so is it
fair to say that just in this shot the iPhone might take a good shot if you
have no intention of doing anything in post but the other ones are
for content creators exactly so this next scenario I wanted to bring up
because it showed where the HDR did not fire I had all the phones set to auto
HDR and once I brought it into post I was able to determine on you know when
it used it and when it didn't if we look at the concrete in this image on the b20
you can see that it's very bright and if we look over at the histogram it
confirms this all the information is pushed to the right indicating that
we're losing a lot of the information in the highlights the pixel the iPhone and
the gs-7 fired off their HDR and was able to preserve the highlights while
keeping the darkest areas still exposed properly me personally I would rather
not have the camera rely on HDR to get a properly exposed photo but once again it
is losing the highlights and so that is a big negative against it so the in this
next example were able to give another clear indication of how it keeps a flat
color profile and gives you the most information to work with the v20 is not
hitting either side of the histogram too hard same with the pixel though it is
exposing a little darker the iPhone is really stretching and adding contrast
into the photo of course and the gs-7 is starting to push it a little bit more
towards the highlights which is as a result washing out the image over all
right and just to my novice eye this is another example where I'm looking at the
four photos and I'm thinking yeah the iPhone does look richer but you know in
the back of my head I know that it's not an accurate shot so how do you think the
v20 compared to the pixel XL is this just a decision you can make by looking
at the histogram you know you would never want to base a decision just on
the histogram alone but the histogram does allow us to understand what's going
on in the photo the v20 nails the exposure which gives
you the most information to apply your own aesthetic to it we ran it through a
gauntlet of tests so in terms of just photography how would you rate the v20
against the other three bones so I would put the pixel at the top of
the heap I think that it has the great advantage
of having something that's punchy right out of your pocket but it still retains
a lot of the information you would want to edit and put your own aesthetic on
the v20 is a good close second especially because I felt it had the
most accurate colors and had the most dynamic range to work with but
unfortunately takes a huge hit in clarity the iPhone is definitely a great
camera but it almost goes a little too far in the direction of making choices
for you which typically I don't like and the
gs-7 comes in last so next up video specifically video stabilization and Dan
you took that contraption out in the field to shoot this now what is that so
this is a rig that I built and it can hold all four phones gripped on kind of
diagonal and so that any kind of movement is going to be pretty equally
spread and then all the cameras kind of were mounted so that the lens was kind
of equidistant from the center so just to start kind of setting up what the
testing situation was we put all four phones in 1080 at the highest quality or
the highest bitrate and then we had them also in full auto mode now not all the
cameras can do stabilization in 4k or the highest resolution because two of
them that is the LGV 20 and the pixel are both using digital stabilization so
it's using kind of part of the sensor to stabilize around the whole thing both
the iPhone and the Samsung are using optical stabilization so it's actually
using a physical element either the lens or the whole sensor itself to kind of
move around and stabilize the shot so the first scenario is really just
walking down the street and I think this is a very normal typical shot that
people would be using for stabilization so it's going to be moving up and down
left to right and going in and out and so it's really testing all the axis of
the stabilization yeah so the V 20 did actually terrible there are these weird
which is it's it's okay smooth but the glitches just make the footage pretty
much unusable in first place though I would say the iPhone did really well it
was pretty smooth not so smooth that it feels like you're floating down the
street still feels like you're walking but there is no jumpiness there's no
glitches it's just all around pretty good and the Samsung phone came right
after that so pretty comparable on its smoothness so how did the pixel Excel do
because Google is making a big deal about their electronic image
stabilization and how strong it is so overall the pixel was pretty good there
are moments where it's very stable but then all of a sudden there were these
little jumps and I think these jumps happen because it's using a digital
stabilization so it's using part of the sensor and then it's jumping to a new
part of the sensor to just kind of follow and keep the frame stabilized so
it's really unfortunate that the v20 was just all-around unusable whereas the
other three I think you can get by okay so that was a really familiar test
walking down the street the next one is much more extreme so what are we looking
at here so this next test is kind of what I'm
calling micro jittering so it's a lot of small little shakes this is what might
happen if you were on a bicycle if you're in a car just these quick little
vibrations so you'll see in this test that pretty much three are usable and
one is not and once again the one that is not is the v20 you know look at that
I mean it's almost it it almost sort of makes you sick just watching it so I'm
not even sure what's going on with the v20 because stabilization and the and
the correction of it is just awful so what about the pixel and the iPhone and
the Samsung so the pixel is doing the best and I think it's because of that
aggressive stabilization that we saw in that in the previous test is now coming
into play where it's really holding that shot super steady and the iPhone and the
Samsung I would argue are both usable but definitely be
find the pixel to kind of test another real-world scenario which is maybe our
kids playing a sport and you're in the stands you want to see how stable the
shot can still be kept and in this case you would think that digital
stabilization which can use you know basically the whole sensor still is
going to do better than optical so really quickly looking at you see all
four oh my good two are now unusable and two are quite usable I would say and
it's interesting that it's not based on the optical versus digital yeah because
both the pixel and the iPhone are doing pretty well here
meanwhile the b20 and the Samsung are once again on the bad side so as an
Android user I know that for image stabilization and video I would
definitely pick the pixel over the v20 but what's your opinion if you're
looking at all four phones the pixel did do quite well in two of the tests but in
that first test that we did they're kind of jumping around I knocked it down a
few points so actually I put the iPhone 7 plus the best in all cases it worked
at least decent and it was predictable and I think you you prefer
predictability sometimes right Adam is back hey hey so we've done a bunch of
testing of the features that LG is specifically promoting as what you need
if you're a content creator so taking everything together and really again
just looking at what we tested do you have a preference as a content grader
for our video team I have no problem saying that you can turn to the LGB 20
and create a lot of awesome content with it in the photo mode you're getting
great dynamic range great color reproduction unfortunately in video
stabilization it fell flat in an audio it's actually the only one that offers
any sort of manual control over the features so I would count that as a win
so it sounds like you're giving the nod to the V 20 is that right you know I
appreciate what the V 20 does in a lot of areas but still the pixel XL I think
is the one that you would turn to for amazing photos especially if you want
really crisp clear photos the electronic stabilization in
the video is actually surprisingly good versus OIS and the audio wall it's okay
for a smartphone I would still be able to use it in a lot of scenarios so the
pixel I still I think is the best content creation phone for the everyday
person okay got it it does sound like the LGB 20 is a very
strong phone for content creators but if you're looking at all the tests the
pixel XL wins