Category
🤖
TechnologieTranscription
00:00Hey what's up, MKBHD here.
00:19So the Samsung Galaxy S21 is $200 cheaper than last year.
00:27That's a big deal.
00:28We're so used to the prices of phones going up and up and up year after year that when
00:33you do see a big jump down in price, it's because there was a conscious decision made
00:38here to offer more value.
00:40So basically every smartphone that's not the highest end thing they can make is fundamentally
00:46a balancing act to try to check just the right set of boxes and combine just the right set
00:52of features to appeal to the most buyers.
00:55And that's especially if you're Samsung because they've got this goal to be the default smartphone,
01:01to keep their top spot, top of mind.
01:03But the customer is more educated than ever, and so no pressure or anything, but you've
01:08got to check the right set of boxes or they'll switch on you.
01:14So the Galaxy S21 they've dropped this year, I think, checks all the most important boxes
01:18most people care about, performance, battery, camera, and the smart sacrifices they've made
01:24to get to drop the price by 200 bucks, almost no one will notice.
01:30Will you?
01:31So first of all, let's just start with the big one.
01:33The design, I've said, I think is nice.
01:35It's actually grown on me.
01:36I started with like, I don't really hate it.
01:39And then it went somewhere up to, I kind of like it.
01:42And now I think it's one of the best, honestly.
01:44If you're going to have a camera bump, own it.
01:46This phone looks good in gray, looks even better in this purple and gold Teddy Fresh
01:51contraste combo, and looks even better in an icon skin, link below, of course.
01:57But generally, like I said, in my S21 Ultra review, this purposeful design, bringing the
02:02metal camera bump straight to the sides where it wraps around the rails.
02:06That's nice.
02:07That's nice.
02:08That's a good call.
02:09But this camera plate here is the only piece of metal on the back of the phone.
02:13The rest is plastic.
02:17And you'd barely notice.
02:18It's still coated in the same way with this like super fine, smooth-ish texture.
02:22Still has the same sheen to it.
02:24It is lighter when you're holding it than the glass phones, the S21 Plus and the S21
02:29Ultra.
02:30But to be honest, I'm way more focused on the smaller footprint than the weight.
02:33This goes all the way down to a 6.2 inch display.
02:35So you'd expect it to be decently light anyway.
02:37And 6.2 inches, by the way, still plenty of screen.
02:40It's a little bit smaller, but it is a pretty big screen.
02:43So the plastic, definitely not something you immediately feel and go, oh, they did
02:48a bad job.
02:49You'll barely notice.
02:50So let's talk about that screen.
02:52So there's a couple of things going on here.
02:54It's still a really great Samsung display.
02:56It's very bright and readable outdoors, has great color and HDR cert.
03:01It's perfectly flat, even flatter at the edges than the slightly curved S21 Ultra.
03:06So I like this flatness a lot.
03:08On this colorway, you do get a little bit of the gold rails kind of peeking around the
03:11sides, which can make it look a little bit cheaper.
03:14Ideally, it's just like thin black bezels and then nothing that would look sleek.
03:18But overall, great display, same great, larger ultrasonic fingerprint reader as the Ultra.
03:24Same size, tiny selfie camera cutout, even though it's a different selfie camera.
03:29And there's no way you notice from watching this YouTube video, but they dropped the resolution
03:35from 1440p to 1080p.
03:38But the reason most people won't notice is, one, it's still a pretty sharp display.
03:441080p on 6.2 inches is up over 400 pixels per inch.
03:48It's not like a bad pixel density.
03:50But two, last year, in order to switch to 120 hertz, you had to use the screen at 1080p.
03:58And so you couldn't use 1440p and 120 hertz at the same time, and that was kind of a bummer.
04:02But Samsung, I guess, ran the numbers, did the research, understood that most people
04:07liked the 120 hertz and would take 1080p for that every time.
04:12So now we do.
04:13It's 1080p every time and it's 120 hertz.
04:15Now would it have been better if we could use both like we can on the Ultra?
04:19Yeah.
04:20But will most people even notice?
04:22I don't think so.
04:23There's also a couple of even smaller things missing.
04:26No S Pen support on the regular S21 like the Ultra got.
04:29And the variable refresh rate goes from 48 hertz to 120 hertz instead of 10 to 120 hertz.
04:35So very small differences that Samsung has weighed against how much money they can save
04:40and whether people will notice or not.
04:42I absolutely did not notice any difference in responsiveness or performance.
04:46This phone has been a great performer.
04:48And speaking of performance, honestly, this is the one area where they still did go super
04:53high end.
04:54This phone has the same chip, the Snapdragon 888 in this region, and it's every bit as
04:58much of a performer as it is on the Ultra.
05:00It does have 8 gigs of RAM instead of 12 or 16, but I never found I noticed any hesitation
05:07or performance or worse multitasking where I was wishing I had all that RAM back.
05:11Now they could have.
05:12They could have gone with a lower end chip, the 7 series.
05:15They could have put a Snapdragon 765G in this phone, like a lot of others have in their
05:20phones at this price.
05:22And it would have been yet another savings they could have made that we probably wouldn't
05:26have really noticed actively as a difference in performance.
05:30But they didn't.
05:31This is still the fastest chip in a phone.
05:33So I really do appreciate that.
05:35All the same capabilities from the Ultra as far as software enabled by the chip, they're
05:39all still here.
05:40And I didn't notice a difference in RAM.
05:42I used it just like I use the Ultra and I had no problems with lag or choppiness at
05:46all.
05:47So throughout all of Samsung's absolutely packed software, you know, the dozens of embedded
05:52one UI features and maximum customization.
05:55It's definitely nice to have a smaller phone that still performs almost exactly like the
06:00bigger phone.
06:01Now these cameras on the back, they're another area where you of course see a difference
06:05between this and the Ultra.
06:07The Ultra we already knew was all about giving you the big numbers, the ultra camera experience.
06:12That's a focus of this phone.
06:14On this phone, I think they've done a great job balancing, taking the features out of
06:19the Ultra that most people probably won't need or even notice.
06:23And there's actually one thing, one thing that this phone does on cameras better than
06:28the Ultra.
06:29Might not have known that.
06:31See if you can guess that.
06:32Go ahead and pause this video.
06:33Go ahead and write down what you think this camera might do better than the Ultra and
06:36then hit play.
06:37We'll see if you're right.
06:38So there's triple cameras on the back of the S21 and they are essentially the same cameras
06:43from the S20.
06:44The main camera, there's an ultra wide and a 3x telephoto.
06:47So no crazy 100x space zoom, just a reasonable maximum of 30x.
06:53But at the end of the day, if you don't do a ton of huge zooms and you still have the
06:56same sort of zoom lock where you can zoom all the way into the end of the camera and
07:00it'll stabilize the software, that's probably about as good as most people will need.
07:04It's not quite as sharp at that range as the Ultra, but will you notice?
07:08There's no laser autofocus here either.
07:10Although I found with the smaller sensor, it still has no focus issues.
07:13And then there's the same Snapdragon triple eight.
07:15So all the same capabilities like single take mode, 8K video, the director's mode,
07:20all that stuff is still here.
07:22So what does it do better than the Ultra?
07:24Well, the one thing with the word ultra in it is the ultra wide camera here on the S21.
07:30It's actually a little bit wider than the ultra wide on the Ultra.
07:34You can see it labels at 0.5x versus 0.6x, but it's a little noticeably wider.
07:40Actually didn't notice it before checking the numbers.
07:42It's great.
07:43Also, I just want to shout out Samsung's portrait mode for getting consistently better
07:46and better over time.
07:48This will be my hot take for this video, but I think Samsung's portrait mode is now the
07:52best portrait mode in any smartphone.
07:56Put it over the iPhone, put it over the pixel, seriously impressive stuff.
08:00So don't let the lack of holes in the back of the camera fool you.
08:03This is still a very capable camera system.
08:06The lack of laser autofocus, the lack of zoom past 30X, the lack of a macro mode built in.
08:12I noticed them because I'm a camera nerd, but most people won't actually miss that stuff.
08:17It's a great camera.
08:18And there's a couple other small things here.
08:20There's a 4,000 mAh battery, which is of course a bit smaller than the 5,000 mAh on the bigger
08:25one.
08:26Yes, but it's still a big battery and it lasted all day getting five plus hours of screen
08:31on time.
08:32No problem.
08:33I could kill it in a day if I'm hammering it all day with a lot of GPS and a lot of
08:36screen on time.
08:38But aside from that, it's fine.
08:39It's a no worry battery.
08:41There's no expandable storage, but that's also gone from the entire lineup.
08:45And so is MST, which was this cool trick that lets Samsung phones use magnetic pulses
08:49to replicate credit card functionality so they could pay with stuff at terminals that
08:54don't support NFC.
08:56Some people are going to hate that this is gone, but that's another bet Samsung had to
09:00make that most people weren't using it.
09:02Those are like the two most sorely missed features for me and a lot of enthusiasts.
09:07Expandable storage and MST was super useful.
09:09But the whole line dropped by $200, so there's going to be stuff that they cut out and that's
09:15the calculus they made is, okay, that's not getting a whole ton of use.
09:19We'll cut those.
09:20But at the end of the day, I think Samsung checked the right set of boxes with the S21.
09:25And it's also only 50 bucks to upgrade and double the storage to 256 gigs, which is pretty
09:30important since you no longer have expandable storage.
09:33And if you're taking lots of photos and 8K videos, you might want that.
09:36So that's another great calculus to make.
09:38But overall, this is no doubt the best bang for the buck in the lineup.
09:41I think it's going to be super common early to compare the S21 to the Ultra, which is
09:46a lot of what I did in this video, but this phone costs $400 more.
09:51So when you compare this phone up against this competition, which is a bunch of other
09:54phones sitting around 6, 7, 800 bucks, it's going to compare pretty favorably.
09:59It's going to have the highest end chip.
10:01It's going to have one of the nicest screens, great fingerprint meter, great camera system,
10:05and the stuff that's missing, which is the stuff that Samsung is hoping you probably
10:10won't care too much about or even notice.
10:12I think they made the right calculations.
10:14So this is it.
10:15This is the standard package.
10:16I have no problem recommending this phone, but I'm also very curious to see how the
10:20rest of the competition will be attacking S21 all year for the rest of 2021.
10:24It'll be fun.
10:25Either way, that's been it.
10:28Definitely watch the S21 Ultra video, right below that like button if you haven't seen
10:32it already.
10:33And that's, that's pretty much it.
10:34I'll catch you guys in the very next video.
10:36See you later.
10:37Peace.