SAMSUNG GALAXY S21 ULTRA

With stats that would make a pro camera blush, does it deliver the goods?

Sitting at the top of Samsung’s Galaxy range, the S21 Ultra enjoys all of Samsung’s best tech, including an array of cameras that we’ll come to in a moment. First though, let’s talk about its size. With a 6.8-inch screen and a touch thicker than the iPhone 12 Pro Max, it’s the biggest phone here. Great for watching movies, but its dimensions might just be a bit too much for some.

Now the cameras, and Samsung hasn’t done things by halves, packing in a hefty four cameras (plus the one on the front). Where to start? Perhaps the biggest statement of intent is the 24mm f/1.8 lens with a 108MP sensor as the primary camera. With more than double the resolution compared to anything from Canon, Nikon and Sony cameras, the pixel pitch on such a densely packed sensor is pretty low at 0.8µmm pixels. That’s not the whole story though. With pixel-binning coming into play, the effective pixel size becomes 2.4µmm and a 12MP resolution.

Why all these pixels? So it can boast a 100x digital zoom, but if you want to get nice telephoto shots with the Galaxy

S21 Ultra, you’re better off using the two dedicated telephoto lenses. There’s a handy 70mm f/2.4 lens with a 10MP sensor

(with 1.22µmm pixels), but the star is the 240mm f/4.9 lens with a 10MP sensor (with 1.22µmm pixels) that rivals here just can’t match.

Don’t worry about image shake at this focal length as

Samsung’s optical image stabilisation does a very good job here. Finally, there’s an ultra wide 13mm f/2.2 lens married to a 12MP sensor at 1.4µmm pixels that can capture a large amount of the scene and handle distortion very well.