DON'T BUY S24 Ultra if... 🤔 Review (vs Galaxy S23 Ultra)
Samsung says a firmware update will be dropping soon that improves camera performance, so for now, until the update happens, I am holding back from comparing its camera now to the iPhone 15 Pro. But if you want to know how its camera is right now compared to the S23 Ultra watch this video.
But aside from the camera, having used it for a week, I’m going to give you 3 big reasons why you should buy the S24 Ultra, and some features that were marketed as upgrades, but don’t really move the needle, especially if you’re holding on to the S23 Ultra.
Reason 1
The first reason to buy is Super-HDR. This allows all images and videos shot in HDR to be displayed correctly on the screen. You don’t get this option on the S23 Ultra or earlier.
To give you an example of why this is important, if you shoot a picture on the S23 Ultra, you’re not seeing it in its full glory because when viewing that same picture on the S24 Ultra, with Super-HDR enabled you can see its full dynamic range in terms of color and brightness.
If you prefer, you can disable this, but I don’t see any good reason to do that.
Reason 2
Second reason has to do with reflectivity. The S24 Ultra uses the new Corning Gorilla Armor front glass which is said to be 4x more scratch resistant, and reduces reflectivity by up to 75% compared to typical glass.
But that is comparing it to everyday glass. When I compared it reflectivity to the S23 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro with a light bar set at 45 degrees, it does reduce more glare, but more like 50% reduction. Still I can definitely see how that is useful, not only for viewing content, but from a content creation perspective also. The phone can be shooting videos or pictures from weird angles like this and this, so having less glare means less interference from artificial lighting or natural light sources around you.
Reason 3
The third reason has to do with its camera. Not so much about the camera quality since it’s quite good now, and I am getting cleaner pictures shooting in low light compared to the S23 Ultra. And there will be a firmware update that could improve it even more which I’ll be talking about when the update lands.
But there are still 2 main benefits to its camera.
If you’re shooting videos in 4K 60fps, you can zoom in and out between the different lenses without having to stop the recording, only to shoot again on another lens. On the previous model the S23 Ultra, you can only do that on 4K 30fps. It’s nice to see Samsung’s flagship finally catch up to the iPhone on this front.
Second, its stabilization is simply better especially when shooting handheld zoom shots. Even before firmware updates it’s already smoother than on previous Galaxy devices.
Reason 4 (Bonus)
Bonus reason to buy the S24 Ultra. Samsung has promised 7 years of security updates, which matches what Google’s offering with the Pixel 8 Pro. For people accustomed to upgrading every few years, it may not seem like a big deal. But this extra longevity to the S23 Ultra could help its resale value when you do decide to upgrade.
Reasons NOT to upgrade.
Everything else to me don’t really matter. For example, the screen is indeed brighter, but the S23 Ultra was already quite bright under direct sunlight.
In terms of battery, it has the same 5000mAH battery as the S23 Ultra, and if you look at battery tests people have been running, you’ll think that it’s way better than S23 Ultra because of improved power management, thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. But actually it’s quite comparable to when the S23 Ultra first came out. Why? Well, the S23 Ultra is an older model, so the battery would have degraded over time anyway.
AI features will also come to the S23 Ultra through a firmware update, so if you were thinking of upgrading because of features like AI Edits, Realtikme language translation and Circle to search, well, you don’t really need to. You’re still going to get it on the S23 Ultra.
One area which no one has really talked about is the sound from the stereo speakers. The S24 Ultra does have slightly better track separation, which lends itself well to video dialogue. But for music, it can sound a tad too shrill for my liking. It’s a very subtle difference, but have a listen and see if you can tell.
Thankfully, this can easily be fixed in the sound settings’ graphic EQ by simply lowering the 1khz band a bit. This way it sounds very similar to the S23 Ultra speakers for music, videos and games.
Final thoughts…
Overall, compared to the S23 Ultra, rather than an upgrade the S24 Ultra’s feeling more like a sidegrade. I do like Super-HDR, less reflectivity, improvements to the camera, and the promised 7 years of updates. These are things which are clearly an upgrade, but otherwise it’s hard to justify getting this new model if it’s not going to solve some issue you were having with the S23 Ultra, and especially if you prefer the camera to have native 10x optical zoom instead of 5x. Something which I covered in this article.
Those are my thoughts after one week of using the S24 Ultra. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. If you’d like to check the S24 Ultra’s latest price, click on the link to its Amazon page below.
Check latest price:
Galaxy S24 Ultra - https://amzn.to/4247A1k
Galaxy S23 Ultra - https://amzn.to/3O6qoay
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