Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra Review - Why Buy Anything Else

The Samsung S24 Ultra: A $1,300 Phone with a Lot to Offer

Now that this phone also has that, why get anything else? But speaking of the iPhone, they're going at them too. Now I know I said in the beginning of this video, $1,300 slab Android phone, so I know the iPhone 15 Pro Max was never really on the table, but if we're being honest, Samsung has never been shy about competing directly against the iPhone, so why not take some of the best stuff from there too? They weren't being subtle about it. So they've got this shiny brand new titanium color with titanium rails on the S24 Ultra, just like the iPhone. They have flattened the screen and the sides, and made boxier corners all the way through the lineup, just like the iPhone. They have moved to a max 5X telephoto lens, like I talked about earlier, also just like the iPhone. They also have this new always on display that doesn't just show the time but shows your whole wallpaper now, kinda like it's half awake, just like the iPhone. Thankfully, you can also turn that off and save some battery, just like the iPhone. You can also now long press to select an object in a photo that automatically cuts it out and makes it a sticker you can use in other apps, just like the iPhone. And there's even these new lock screen widgets now that look exactly like the iPhones.

These two are going to keep copying each other till the end of time, none of this is a surprise, it's just at the end of the day we are technically winning because they're making each other a little bit better bit by bit. But at the end of the day, S24 Ultra, I really do feel like it feels like peak slab phone. And there's also a whole bunch of stuff I didn't even really mention with this phone. The haptics are really nice, I didn't even get to that. Now there's AI generated wallpapers, a whole section for them, if you're into that. It's nice that the AI stuff is mostly kinda tucked away in ways where you don't ever have to use it if you don't want to, but if you notice it and it's helpful to you, bam, turn it on, could be your favorite feature.

Really the only things that I miss from the Pixel specifically are Call Screening and Now Playing. So really the best argument not to buy this $1,300 phone is the fact that it's a $1,300 phone. And the truth is, you can get 98% of the phone for much less money. You can see it in Samsung's own lineup. Samsung's own S24 Plus has a 4,900mAh battery instead of a 5,000. It has a 6.7 inch display instead of 6.8 and it drops the S Pen and one of the telephoto cameras for $300 off. And you know you can get the regular S24 again, also for much less money with almost as much phone. So you don't have to spend $1,300 on a phone. But if you are going to, and you put the word Ultra in the name, and you stuff as much stuff in one phone as you possibly can, this is the one that you should get.

This has all the things; it's reliable, it's fast, it does everything, it checks all the boxes, it sounds great. It kinda feels like an ad when I just say all these positive things about the phone but it's not. Until right now, this video is sponsored by Ridge. The Ridge Wallet is iconic at this point. It's a minimalist, modern wallet like the opposite of those old school wallets. It's got the patented dual-track design that expands to hold one to 12 cards while being as slim as possible. And at this point, there's like 30 plus different colors and styles including carbon fiber, burnt titanium, and forged ember. This one is the forged ember, so it's got these little red flex in it, which look cool.

You can also get accessories for it, so if you wanna carry cash, you might want the money clip or this one has the cash strap. Or if you want the Air Tag holder, you can get one that holds the Air Tag to it, so you never lose your wallet. And on top of all that, if you get one and you don't like it, you can return it within 99 days, no questions asked. So if you wanna grab one, you can get 10% off using code MKBHD or go to ridge.com/mkbhd. Tell 'em I sent you. Either way, that's been it for the S24 Ultra. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys on the next one, peace.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- All right, you have $1,300 to spendon an Android slab phone in 2024.Why would you get any other phone?No, seriously, why wouldyou get any other phone?This S 24 Ultra has taken the best thingsfrom every other ultra high-end phoneand stuffed them into one place,so anything that you could possibly value,it has pushed to the max.And there's just multiple cherries on top,just sprinkled all over the place.This phone sets the tone for 2024.(soft upbeat music)So the formula for Samsung's Ultra phoneshas evolved a little bit over the years.At first, it was just the most numbers,the biggest megapixel count,the most zoom and all that.Then it added the S Penand got a little more refinedand it replaced the Note.Now it's just everything.It's just everything in one place.It's all the best hardware,all the best software I canthink of all in one phone.So on the outside, like Isaid in my early impressions,this phone looks almost thesame as last year's phone,but if you think thisphone is almost the sameas last year's phone, turnsout you're missing a lot.So the more you use this phone,the more you look for weaknesses,the more impressive it gets.So maybe what?You're a screen snob, right?You like to pixel peep,maybe you were thinking aboutgetting one of the ultrahigh-end Oppo or Xiaomi phonesjust for an amazing screen.All right, well, look no further.Literally one of the bestscreens than any phone.S24 Ultra has dropped in a class leading6.8 inch quad HD AMOLEDdisplay and it is awesome.These ultra phones havehad 120Hz LTPO for a whileand they've been this really sharp quad HDfor a while now too.But now on top of that, two new things,one is it's completely flatand two is its much brighter.So there's been this whole new batchof like 2,500 plus nit phonesin the past couple months that I've seen.This I think is the best lookingone that I've seen so far.So now it's up to a max 2,600 nits,which is awesome outdoors or anywhere.But it also gets extremelydim at night too,without any of the weird bandingI've seen in some other phones.And they flattened the display completelyand brought the displayright up to the very cornerswith some of the thinnestbezels we've seenall the way around.Plus there's also this newanti-reflective coatingon this Gorilla Glass Armorthat makes a noticeable differencewith certain light hittingit at off axis angles.And then there is a crazy fastultrasonic fingerprint readerunderneath to top it all off.And you know, maybe Iwish the touch targetwas a little bit bigger,but that's about it.Honestly, if you're a screen snob,it doesn't really get betterthan this one right here.This is the phone you should get.Okay, so what if your primaryconcern is battery life?Well, you could alwaysget the Energizer phonethat we saw at CES at one time,but as far as reasonablysized flagship slab phones go,it doesn't get much better than this.Again, they're keeping a 5,000mAh batteryin one of the bestperforming battery phonesfrom the past two years,despite making it thinnerand keeping the S Pen.So you might as well get this one.Still got 45 watt wired charging,you still have 25 watt wireless chargingand just battery life-wise,I was able to have longdays with no problems,with six hours plus screen on time.I was able to baby it intogetting two full days,that's at 1440p, at 120Hzand with high brightness use.So yeah, Why get anything else?So okay, what if thenit's just performanceis the main thing that you care about.Okay, so we're seeing all these phoneswith the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 starting to come outand they're looking really good.Great high-end performance,there's efficiency gainsall over the place,plus this phone pairsit with 12 gigs of RAMand it is a multitasking champ.And if it's a stylusyou're into, I already knowyou aren't reallyconsidering any other phone,the S Pen is basicallythe only high-end stylusstill going in slab smartphones.It's really good for note-taking,drawing, highlighting,all that stuff.But if you're like me andyou hardly ever use that,there's still the gaming performanceand the everyday performance.There's the newly added rate tracingplus a 90% larger vaporchamber to cool the phonefor much longer stuff.Turns out it's an A plus.Now you could always get a gaming phoneand squeeze five to 10% more framesout of a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3with some huge badass coolingsetup, and that's great,but then you also have toaccept all of the sacrificesthat come with saidgaming phone over this.And do you really wantthose extra frames that bad?Depends on who you ask.Okay, cameras, there's a lotof other phones out therethat you could buy if your 1,300 bucksspecifically has to goto the best cameras.You know the Pixel justwon the blind camera test.Sony has the best manual mode,like there's other great camera systems.But here's a way to simplify it,I think in evaluating smartphone cameras,there's basically two ways to review them.There's the utility, theactual technical evaluation,and the aesthetics, the artof it, the subjectivity part.And I think utility-wise,like on paper, specs-wise,this camera's got it all.Like you've seen this camera array before,there's four cameras onthe back of this phone.Turns out, they'rebasically the same camerasas last year's S23 Ultra except for one.So there's a primary camera, an ultra wideand a pair of two differenttelephoto cameras.The primary camera is still the ridiculous200 megapixel sensor withall the same pros and cons.It's consistent andversatile across the board.It has great dynamic range.It's a quick shooter with quick auto focusand it's also always bendingdown to 12 megapixelsand you should almost never switch itto the 200 megapixel modeunless you have incredible lighting.It has an ultra widewith a bit of distortion near the edges,but it's actually meaningfully widerthan the primary camera, soit's really fun to shoot with.Even though the automaticmacro mode from itlooks like trash and youshould just turn it offanytime it turns your picturesfrom this to this, pro tip.And then it has a mediumrange, 3X telephoto camerathat kicks in smoothly andmatches the colors and exposurefrom the main camera really well.And so the one new thingin hardware this yearis they've gone from a10 megapixel, 10X camerato a 50 megapixel 5X camera.So technically, shorteroptical zoom range,but I would say with the extra resolution,it is actually more powerful.It means all the photos inthe gap between 5X and 10Xlook sharper than last year.And then you can literally putthe 10X photos side by sidefrom the S23 Ultra and the S24 Ultraand the new 5X croppedin actually looks better.Plus you can still zoom all the way inand shoot at a 100X ifyou still wanna takeultra stable pictures of faraway objects like the moon.But basically what I'msaying is utility-wise,this camera systemchecks every single box.It has everything.So from thereyou get into the moresubjective aesthetic differenceswhich you could alwayslean one way or the other.I think, I mean, looking at these photos,they're still very much Samsung'sslightly extra process-looking,a little bit extra contrasty,a little bit higher exposure,a little brighter colors,that still happens with these photos.So you could still convince yourselfto lean Pixel or even iPhone,but if you just wanna be ableto check every single box,why look anywhere else?Honestly, the changes that you notice moreaside from the actual camera qualityare just like features using it.Like the S24 Ultra shootseverything HDR by default now,it's actually in Google'snew ultra HDR format.So when you have specular highlightsor big dynamic rangedifferences in a photo,it will tastefully crank up that stufffor a more dramatic lookingpicture on the phone screen,similar to what Pixeland iPhone already do.And this passes through all theway from capturing the phototo viewing it in the gallery,and then one more step,to actually publishing it on social media.So Samsung has worked withInstagram and Snapchatfor native quality photo andvideo uploading pipelinesbecause at the end of theday, once you take the photo,what are you 99% of thetime planning to do with it?Share it.And I think this is importantfor a lot of people,one of the reasons I havecarried an iPhone for yearsis one of the thingsyou can always count onis the photos and videosin third party appsare going to look just as goodas if they were capturedin the main camera.And now you can actuallysay that that is true nowabout photos and videos from this phone,at least in Instagram and Snapchat.All right, maybe you're a software person,maybe the top of your listwhen buying a new smartphoneis you want the smartest smartphone.It's gotta have all thesoftware and AI features.And honestly, it should have anice long roadmap ahead of itof on-time software updates,sounds like I'm describing a Pixelbut turns out, this phone now has a ton,a ton of helpful AI features built-inthat are actually good,they make a meaningfuldifference to everyday use.Now the funny part about a lot of thisis a lot of these features are madein partnership with Google, as you'll see.And I can't help but keep thinkinglike it feels like Samsung needs Googleto have all of thesefeatures in their phoneto compete especially against the iPhone.But then Google,now their own phones are alittle bit less competitive,but it's probably worth the trade offbecause now technicallythey're helping to competeagainst the iPhone.It's this weird like thingwhere they need each other.I think it's fascinatingand probably worth its own separate video,maybe let me know with a commentor by subscribing ifyou'd be down to see that.But that's all thebackground, all of this.So we were just talkingabout photos a second ago,the second you're done taking a photoand opening it up inSamsung's Gallery app,there's a ton of useful AI driven stuffthat you can do with it.And it's kinda all basedon what sort of sceneit auto detects that you've taken.So lots of photos just endup with a remaster buttonwhere you click it and thenit can add some contrastand brighten things upa little bit as neededand gives you a solid before and after.But if your photo hassome glass or a window,it'll show you an Erase Reflections buttonand then you can literally go inand circle the reflectionsyou wanna get rid ofand it'll generative fillwhat should actually be in the glass.And it works pretty well.Now with this photo, I didn'ttake it in portrait modebut it's recognized that there's a subjectand so it'll offer to add background blur.And even without a bunchof extra depth information,it analyzes the subject andit lets me add a little bitor a lot of background blurwith a pretty good cutout, if you ask me,to just create a portraitmode shot out of thin air.But if you ever really,really wanna go crazy,there's a whole separate Magic Editorthat feels exactly like whatwe just got with the Pixelminus any restrictions,it's never told me it can't do something.So you open any photo,hit that Edit button,and then there's this littleblue green button with the stars,that's Samsung's new Magic Editor.And once you're here,you can just go nuts.You can move the subject around a photoand have a generativefill in the background.Or you can have it remove things entirelyfrom the foreground orthe background of a photo,like photo bombers or justunnecessary random objects.I actually found this super useful.But probably actually myfavorite one, underrated,you know how normally whenyou need to tilt a photo,like fix the horizon,you end up cropping inand losing some of theoutside of the photo?You can still do that butwith this Magic Editor,you can open it up and tilt the horizonto whatever angle you want,and instead of cropping,it will literally generativefill in the outsidesof the photo, which works very wellbecause usually the outside of the photois the least important part of the photo.You can get away with generative fill.And by the way, literally allthis stuff works with photosyou download to the phone too,not just photos you'vetaken on the camera,but photos you just getwherever just like the Pixel.Now I also find it hilariousthat if you use the MagicEditor to alter a photoon this phone, it'lladd a little watermarkto the bottom cornerwith these little starsso that you know that thisphoto was AI manipulated,which is good, that's a goodresponsible thing to do,especially if you're gonnaupload this to social media.But then you can alsoimmediately erase that watermarkwith a built-in object removal toolin Samsung's Photo Editor app.There's a nice littlesection in the settingswhere Samsung's tucked all ofthe AI features of this phone.It's called Advanced Intelligence,instead of artificial intelligence.Still AI though.That's where you get stuff likethe live phone call translation featureor the new Voice Recorder appgetting much improved speaker labelsand summaries and transcriptions.The Samsung Browser will nowdo summaries of webpages.This might all sound very familiar,but the best new one in myopinion is Circle to Search.Now Google Lens has beenaround for a long time,in my opinion, one of Google'smost underrated products.So people might have already knownthat you could basically do this already,but it would take several steps.Circle to Search, just makes it one step.It's much faster, it's pretty awesome.You literally just holddown on the home buttonor the gesture bar at thebottom and then circle or tapwhatever on your screenthat you wanna Google searchand it just immediately Googlesover the top of whatever you were doingwithout leaving thatapp and it's so useful.Just, even during the weekI've been using this phone,I've searched pictures,parts of pictures before,it almost always works,just like uploading it to Google Lens.I've searched objects right in front of methrough the camera view finder.I've searched random landmarks.You can also search textand you can even appendtext to your search.And I was just constantlyimpressed by how fast it is,and it basically works asexpected every single time.The one fidgety part issometimes selecting textgets a little weird.Using the S Pen cansolve that a little bitto just get a more precise selection.But yeah, once you do it,it's much faster than ifyou're gonna use Google Lens,having to like take a screenshotand then upload it through Lensand then maybe have to cropit and the whole thing.This is just fast.Now real OGs will know thatthere used to be a featureon Pixels called Now on Tap.It was like the same exactthing, hold the home buttonand it would just Googlewhatever was on your screenand help you out but thatwas everything on your screenand they kinda ended up wrappingthat into Google Assistant.This is just so muchfaster and more selective.Also, Pixels are gonna getthis feature very soon as well.But then bonus points, ifyou really love software,Samsung is now promising sevenyears of security updatesand seven generations ofmajor software updateson this phone, on this S24 lineup.I assume seven generationsof software updatesis basically seven years.That means this phone willbe up to date in 2031.Loving that.So we know the common wisdomwas that if you wanted four,five, six plus years of software updatesor if you want every singlelittle software and AI feature,you basically had to go iPhone or Pixel.But now that this phone also has that,why get anything else?But speaking of the iPhone,they're going at them too.Now I know I said in thebeginning of this video,$1,300 slab Android phone, soI know the iPhone 15 Pro Maxwas never really on the table,but if we're being honest,Samsung has never been shyabout competing directlyagainst the iPhone,so why not take some of thebest stuff from there too?They weren't being subtle about it.So they've got this shinybrand new titanium colorwith titanium rails on the S24Ultra, just like the iPhone.They have flatten the screen and the sidesand made boxier corners allthe way through the lineup,just like the iPhone.They have moved to a max 5X telephoto lenslike I talked about earlier,also just like the iPhone.They also have this new always on displaythat doesn't just show the timebut shows your whole wallpaper now,kinda like it's half awakejust like the iPhone.Thankfully, you can also turn that offand save some battery,just like the iPhone.You can also now long pressto select an object in a photothat automatically cuts itout and makes it a stickeryou can use in other apps,just like the iPhone.And there's even these newlock screen widgets nowthat look exactly like the iPhones,like copy my homeworkbut don't even worry ifthey know you copied it.These two are gonnakeep copying each othertill the end of time, noneof this is a surprise,it's just at the end of theday we are technically winningbecause they're making each othera little bit better bit by bit.But at the end of the day, S24 Ultra,I really do feel like,it feels like peak slab phone.And there's also a whole bunch of stuffI didn't even reallymention with this phone.The haptics are really nice,I didn't even get to that.Now there's AI generated wallpapers,a whole section for 'em,if you're into that.And it's nice that the AI stuffis mostly kinda tucked awayin ways where you don'tever have to use itif you don't want to,but if you notice itand it's helpful to you,bam, turn it on, couldbe your favorite feature.Really the only things that I miss,from the Pixel specifically,are Call Screening and Now Playing.So really the best argumentnot to buy this $1,300 phoneis the fact that it's a $1,300 phone.And the truth is youcan get 98% of the phonefor much less money.You can see it in Samsung's own lineup.Samsung's own S24 Plushas a 4,900mAh batteryinstead of a 5,000.It has a 6.7 inch display instead of 6.8and it drops the S Pen andone of the telephoto camerasfor $300 off.And you know you can get the regular S24,again, for much less moneywith almost as much phone.So you don't have to spend1,300 bucks on a phone.But if you are going to,and you put the word Ultra in the nameand you stuff as much stuff in one phoneas you possibly can, this isthe one that you should get.This has all the things;it's reliable, it'sfast, it does everything,it checks all the boxes, it sounds great.It kinda feels like an ad when I just sayall these positive thingsabout the phone but it's not.Until right now, this videois sponsored by Ridge.The Ridge Wallet is iconic at this point.It's a minimalist, modern walletslike the opposite ofthose old school wallets.It's got the patented dualtrack design that expandsto hold one to 12 cards whilebeing as slim as possible.And at this point, there'slike 30 plus different colorsand styles including carbonfiber, burnt titaniumand forged ember.This one is the forged ember,so it's got these little redflex in it, which look cool.You can also get accessories for it,so if you wanna carry cash,you might want the money clipor this one has the cash strap.Or if you want the Air Tag holder,you can get one thatholds in the Air Tag to itso you never lose your wallet.And on top of all that,if you get one and you don't like it,you can return it within 99days, no questions asked.So if you wanna grab one,you can get 10% off using code MKBHDor go to ridge.com/mkbhd.Tell 'em I sent you.Either way, that's beenit for the S24 Ultra.Thanks for watching.Catch you guys on the next one, peace.(soft upbeat music)\n"