Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review
Our Verdict
The Milky way S21 Ultra is the best Android phone withal with dual zoom lenses, a stellar display and excellent battery life. The South Pen is but a bonus
For
- Dynamic half-dozen.8-inch AMOLED brandish
- Dual telephoto lenses
- S Pen support
- Great bombardment life
Confronting
- Pricey
- No charger or microSD card
- A bit bulky
Tom's Guide Verdict
The Galaxy S21 Ultra is the best Android phone nevertheless with dual zoom lenses, a stellar display and fantabulous bombardment life. The S Pen is just a bonus
Pros
- +
Dynamic half dozen.8-inch AMOLED display
- +
Dual telephoto lenses
- +
Southward Pen support
- +
Swell battery life
Cons
- -
Pricey
- -
No charger or microSD card
- -
A flake bulky
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra led the charge for the best Android phones in 2021. It packs in all of the features you could possibly want in a telephone, peculiarly if you lot prefer big screens. While information technology lags behind some of other meridian contenders, it'due south nevertheless a very good device for whatever Android fan out there.
For $1,199 — or $100 more than the iPhone thirteen Pro Max — you a get dynamic vi.8-inch brandish and dual telephoto lenses for crazy zoom power. Plus, the S21 Ultra supports the S Pen, a commencement for the Galaxy S series.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra specs
Display: 6.viii inches AMOLED (3200 x 1400); 10 to 120Hz
CPU: Snapdragon 888
RAM: 12GB, 16GB
Storage: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
Rear cameras: 108MP broad (f/1.8), 12MP ultra wide (f/ii.2), 10MP telephoto (3x zoom, f/2.4), 10MP telephoto (10x zoom, f/four.nine), laser AF sensor
Front photographic camera: 40MP (f/2.two)
Video: 8K 30 fps/4K 60 fps
Battery: 5,000 mAh
Battery life: 11 hours 25 min (60Hz), 10:07 (adaptive)
Wireless: 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, UWB
Size: half dozen.5 x ii.97 x 0.35 inches
Weight: 8.08 ounces
The Galaxy S21 Ultra comes in a sleeker design and offers faster performance from Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 fleck. And, different the regular Galaxy S21, yous don't have to brand well-nigh as many trade-offs. You get a better principal 108MP camera, a glass dorsum (instead of plastic), more RAM and a college-res display.
Equally you'll see in my Milky way S21 Ultra review, in that location are some trade-offs. Merely overall, this is i of the all-time phones money can purchase for those willing to pay a premium and one of the best Android phones overall.
- The best unlocked Android phones: Where the S21 Ultra ranks
- What should you purchase? Galaxy S21 vs Milky way S21 Ultra
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review crook sheet
- The dynamic display on the Galaxy S21 Ultra delivers a smooth 120Hz refresh rate and sharpest WQHD resolution at the same fourth dimension. And it's amazingly brilliant and colorful to kick.
- The dual telephoto lenses (3x and 10x optical zoom) get you very close to your subject, and the new Zoom Lock feature keeps things steadier with digital Space Zoom.
- The Southward Pen back up is nice to have, only y'all take to buy the stylus and a example to hold it separately.
- At $1,199, the S21 Ultra isn't cheap, but information technology's $200 less than the S20 Ultra. However, you lot don't get a charger in the box or a microSD carte du jour slot.
- The larger fingerprint sensor is welcome, making the S21 Ultra easier to unlock.
- The 11.5 hours of bombardment life is excellent for a 5G phone.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra release date and cost
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is available right now and yous tin purchase carrier and unlocked versions of the telephone.
The Ultra starts at $ane,199 and includes 12GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. You can too upgrade to 256GB of storage and to a model with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. The 256GB model costs $1,249 — basically an actress $50 — while you lot'll pay $ane,379 for a Galaxy S21 Ultra with 512GB of storage.
Over in the U.Yard, the Milky way S21 Ultra starts at £ane,149 for the 12GB of RAM and 128GB of storage base model. That price rises to £1,199 for the 256GB handset and tops out at £1,329 for the model with 16GB and 512GB of internal storage.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Design and colors
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is a monolith of a phone. Yep, the contour cut camera design blends the camera bump into the glass dorsum, but this is still a massive device you lot'll want to apply with two hands. Nosotros've recognized as the all-time designed device in our Tom's Guide Awards 2021 for phones.
With its 0.35 inch profile and weight of 8.08 ounces, the S21 Ultra is thicker and heavier than the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The display is gently curved, dissimilar the fully flat regular Galaxy S21, just non annoyingly then. I never accidentally tapped something on screen as I did with last twelvemonth's Ultra.
The Milky way S21 Ultra comes in just two colors from carriers: Phantom Black and Phantom Silverish. I might go with black because of its slimming effect. Samsung.com is offering exclusive S21 Ultra colors, though, including Phantom Navy, Phantom Titanium and Phantom Dark-brown. Best Buy has an sectional Navy Blue colorway, also.
1 of my favorite design upgrades is the 1.7x larger fingerprint sensor. Information technology makes information technology easier to unlock the phone, and I found that the S21 Ultra didn't ask me to press the sensor once more similar previous phones.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Display
The 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED display on the Galaxy S21 Ultra is simply ane of the best screens on a phone. It's bright, vibrant and doesn't make yous choose between the highest resolution and highest refresh rate like its predecessor.
Yes, you lot'll exist mesmerized when watching videos on this phablet. The colors are as rich as ever, and the viewing angles nice and wide when bing watching on Netflix.
But the Ultra surpasses the iPhone with its dynamic refresh charge per unit. Not only do you get super smooth scrolling and gameplay, you now get 120Hz and quad Hd resolution at the aforementioned fourth dimension. So you don't accept to choose between the highest resolution and highest refresh rates.
The S21 Ultra is also smart enough to automatically dial the refresh rate all the mode downwardly to 10Hz to help save on power.
More skilful news, the S21 Ultra's display is easy to read outdoors, because it can attain a acme rated brightness of 1,500 nits. In our testing, the S21 Ultra averaged 821 nits, which beats the iPhone 12 Pro Max's 654 nits.
The S21 Ultra'south screen proved plenty colorful in our lab tests, with the console producing 81.iv% of the demanding DCI-P3 colour gamut, compared to 84.8% for the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
The colors on the iPhone were a flake more accurate, with its screen achieving a Delta-E score of 0.07, compared to 0.35 for the Galaxy S21 Ultra.
Samsung says the S21 Ultra has a 3 million:ane contrast ratio, which is fifty% higher than the S20 Ultra. And there's an Centre Comfort Shield feature that's designed to reduce eye fatigue by limiting blue light.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Cameras
It'southward the cameras where the Milky way S21 Ultra stands out the most against the S21 and S21 Plus. There'due south a main 108MP wide sensor and 12MP ultra-wide photographic camera, which is complemented by a laser auto focus sensor.
The Infinite Zoom is so good information technology should not fall in the wrong easily. #GalaxyS21Ultra picture show.twitter.com/ONJPWtdUZYJanuary 15, 2021
The Galaxy S21 Ultra will make you feel like a hugger-mugger agent as you lot zoom in. While the iPhone 12 Pro Max is stuck at 2.5x optical zoom, the S21 Ultra packs two telephoto lenses of 3x and 10x optical zoom.
I was amazed how close I got to this sign well beyond a highway. At 100x the zoom does get shaky but the new Zoom Lock characteristic tin can help you become a steadier shot with but a tap.
The 108MP main camera can capture 12-bit HDR photos with 64 times richer color data and more iii times the dynamic range of the S20 Ultra. Plus, there'due south a 12-bit RAW file option in Pro fashion.
I tested the photographic camera out at a nearby shop to capture a shot of produce, and the greenish peppers in the foreground look shiny and delicious. And you can brand out a pretty astonishing corporeality of item when you zoom in. Even so, by comparison, the iPhone 12 Pro Max'due south shot looks even more vibrant.
The Milky way S21 Ultra is as well a great partner to have when yous're outdoors. Have this photo of towering trees I took at a nearby park. You can make out fine detail in the bawl, and the phone does a not bad job capturing the clouds against the blue heaven even while dealing with all of the shadows in the foreground. I slightly prefer the S21 Ultra's photo in this case to the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but it's really shut.
Samsung says it has also improved the Portrait mode on the S21 past leveraging AI to better split up the discipline from the background. The S21 Ultra delivers a great bokeh issue hither. My skin tone is warmer on the iPhone 12 pro Max, but overall the S21 shot looks nifty.
The Milky way S21 Ultra also performs quite well in low light, thanks to a faster Bright Night sensor and 12MP nona-binning technology for reducing noise reduction. In this comparison you can make out more of the stones and bushes in the foreground in the S21 Ultra'southward photo compared to the iPhone 12 Pro Max, although the iPhone's colors look more natural.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max pulls alee in this photo of a golden retriever. The S21 Ultra's pic is overly vivid and a bit washed out, while his fur his more golden and natural looking with the iPhone.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Video
On the video front end, the Galaxy S21 Ultra tin can tape 8K video upward to thirty fps and all of its cameras tin can capture 4K video at upwardly to lx fps. But the coolest video upgrade is Director'southward View.
There's a new vlogger style that lets you use the front and dorsum cameras as the same fourth dimension for recording video. And you can see live thumbnails of each photographic camera while you're recording video, then you tin make a quick call if you desire to switch.
The Galaxy S21 Ultra's footage looks stunning. As I swept around a river with the S21 Ultra, it delivered near movie-quality results. The dark blue water, dock and puffy clouds all came through crystal articulate.
And, yep, you can feel gratuitous to motility around a lot while shooting. With Super Steady way on the S21 Ultra engaged, I captured smoothen footage even as I walked fast up a hill.
If you desire to take photos and stills at one time, the Single Have two.0 feature on the S21 Ultra is pretty fun. It managed to capture my endeavour at a contrary layup in ho-hum mo and pick a pretty adept photo at the top of the jump. However, the music Samsung chooses sometimes for its car-generated video clips sounds cheesy.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Functioning
The Galaxy S21 Ultra is i of the first phones powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 888 chip, which is complemented past 12GB or 16GB of RAM.
And this is one fast Android phone. The S21 Ultra didn't flinch equally I sliced through multiple enemies in Grimvalor while delivering console-quality visuals.
This flagship backs up my experience with impressive benchmark scores. On Geekbench 5, the S21 Ultra notched 3,440 on the multi-core test and 1,123 on single-core. That's backside the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which cleared iv,100 and 1,600, only it's withal the all-time scores we've seen from an Android telephone.
The S21 Ultra also fared well on the 3DMark Wild Life graphics benchmark, hitting 34 fps. The iPhone 12 Pro Max averaged 54 fps.
On our video editing test using the Adobe Premiere Rush app, the Galaxy S21 Ultra took 1 infinitesimal and 2 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p. That's faster than the Annotation twenty Ultra's ane:xvi merely withal well behind the iPhone 12 Pro Max'due south 28 seconds.
Unfortunately, while you have a range of storage options to choose from for the S21 Ultra — 128, 256 or 512GB — Samsung ditched the microSD menu slot. So you can't expand.
Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Battery life and charging
If you're looking for a phone that can last all twenty-four hours, this is it. On our web surfing battery test over 5G, the S21 Ultra's 5,000 mAh endured for 11 hours and 25 minutes. That beats the iPhone 12 Pro Max'southward ten:53 and lands the Ultra on our best phone battery life list.
Note that this time is with the standard 60Hz display style turned on and that y'all'll meet less battery life with adaptive way (up to 120Hz) engaged. In this mode we saw a runtime of 10 hours and 7 minutes.
The biggest bummer is that you don't get a charger in the box. Yep, it'south the greenish thing to do, but if yous haven't bought a telephone in the last couple of years and don't have USB-C, it will hateful more money coming out of your pocket.
Using a 25-watt charger, the S21 Ultra reached 56% in 30 minutes and 31% in fifteen minutes.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: S Pen
For the beginning time ever, a Milky way S device supports the Southward Pen, the S21 Ultra makes that happen with a Wacom digitizer congenital into the display. The S Pen, which is optional, lets you draw, sketch and have notes, merely as you tin can on the Milky way Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra. It also comes in handy for quickly signing documents.
Just proceed in mind that the S Pen is sold separately, and you'll need to bound for a uniform case if yous want to store the stylus on the go when information technology'south non in use. Samsung sells a Silicone Encompass with Southward Pen included for $69.99.
I tried out this case, and it adds bulk to already bulky phone. The Southward Pen functionality worked pretty well, and you can enjoy features like Screen Off memo for quickly jotting down notes. Notwithstanding, because Bluetooth isn't built in, you tin can't apply the pen equally a remote control equally you can with the Notation 20 Ultra. So yous tin can't skip tracks with a button press or command slideshows.
Samsung is developing a 2nd stylus. The S Pen Pro ships after this twelvemonth for an undisclosed toll, which will include Bluetooth connectivity.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: 5G, Wi-Fi 6E and UWB
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra supports all of the latest wireless standards, starting with 5G. The Qualcomm X60 modem within this device is capable of carrier assemblage, which should outcome in higher peak speeds while delivering meliorate power efficiency.
The performance was pretty solid in my neck of the woods on T-Mobile. I saw download speeds exceed 160 Mbps. It'due south not fantastic, simply the iPhone 12 Pro Max mustered only 100 Mbps in the same location when I popped the same SIM card in that telephone.
In addition, the Milky way S21 Ultra is one of the first phones to support Wi-Fi 6E, a new standard that delivers faster speeds and more overall bandwidth when yous take a uniform Wi-Fi 6E router.
Lastly, the S21 Ultra has UWB (ultra-wideband), which makes it easier to share files with other UWB devices, similar the Galaxy S21 Plus. And you lot'll be able to use this telephone as a digital central for select 2022 cars.
If you're constantly losing stuff — like me — you'll want to cheque out Samsung's new Galaxy SmartTags. You can use this tag in combination with the SmartThings Find app to track down everything from your keys to your bag. You can likewise use the SmartThings Find app to locate other Samsung devices, including phones, smartwatches, tablets and earbuds.
Galaxy S21 Ultra vs. Galaxy S21 vs Galaxy S21 Plus
We accept a whole commodity dedicated to Galaxy S21 vs Galaxy S21 Plus vs Milky way S21 Ultra, as in that location are many differences. But here are the key things to know. The Galaxy S21 Ultra has the highest resolution main camera (108MP vs 64MP for S21 and Plus), the most powerful zooms (100x vs 30x) and the sharpest display (QHD vs 1080p).
In addition, the screen on the Ultra is more dynamic, as it can scale from 120Hz all the way down to 10Hz, while the panels on the regular S21 and S21 Plus go down to 48Hz. This helps salvage on battery life. And the S21 Ultra has the largest battery at 5,000 mAh, compared to the S21 (4,000 mAh) and S21 Plus (four,800 mAh).
Lastly, the S21 Ultra has the most RAM at 12GB to 16GB, while the S21 and S21 Plus make due with 8GB. And only the S21 Ultra has a 512GB storage selection. See our full Samsung Galaxy S21 review for more.
Galaxy S21 Ultra vs. iPhone 13 Pro Max
The biggest competitor for the Galaxy S21 Ultra is the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Apple's phone delivers faster performance from its A15 Bionic fleck, and you get a strong Ceramic Shield forepart display that's designed to be more durable.
Apple actually closed the gap this yr by offering vastly improved battery life, a dynamic 120Hz display, and blistering performance. Information technology as well starts at $100 less than Samsung while offering better cameras to boot. If you're platform-agnostic, there are few reasons to pick the Milky way S21 Ultra over the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
For more, encounter our in-depth iPhone 13 Pro Max vs. Milky way S21 Ultra face-off.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra vs. Galaxy Z Fold 3
The Galaxy Z Fold 3 is Samsung'due south latest foldable, showcasing the visitor's prowess when it comes to display technology and hardware pattern. The Fold 3 is a big, powerful phone that Samsung has intended to succeed the venerable Milky way Note line (RIP).
The Z Fold three also has Southward Pen back up like the S21 Ultra, though it has fewer cameras. Photography aficionados who prefer Samsung phones volition want to stick with the S21 Ultra this year.
Our Galaxy Z Fold iii vs. Galaxy S21 Ultra face up-off breaks downward the differences. Simply if you lot're tired of the old smartphone design, and then the Galaxy Z Fold three (or even Milky way Z Flip three) is worth looking at — bearing in mind that it's quite expensive.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Android 12 update
Samsung released One UI 4 for the Galaxy S21 Ultra in mid-November 2021. This update brings Android 12, which offers several key improvements to the UI and privacy elements. You tin can now choose your system emphasis color with the Color Palette, or access the privacy dashboard to see which apps are using your mic, photographic camera, and location.
While Samsung has modified something from what you'll notice on a Pixel phone, yous can read our Android 12 review to learn more than about what you can look with the update.
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review: Verdict
Samsung has nearly perfected the large-screen phone with the Galaxy S21 Ultra. The display is best-in-class, the cameras are much improved and you tin can fifty-fifty use this thing equally a Galaxy Note if you lot desire to.
Personally, I see the South Pen support as more of a bonus because of the added cost.
There are some things I don't like nearly this flagship. It'due south a scrap big and heavy, and the lack of a charger and microSD card slot both sting. And while the S21 Ultra is fast, it's notwithstanding a step backside the iPhone 12 Pro Max. And then once more, Samsung's phone lasts longer on charge and lets you do more than with its cameras.
Overall, if y'all're looking for the height of Android phones, the S21 Ultra is information technology. It does, however, face stiff competition from the fantabulous OnePlus ix Pro for the championship of ultimate Android phone.
- More than: Milky way S21 Plus vs. Galaxy S21 Ultra: Which is all-time for you?
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 vs. Galaxy S21 Ultra: Which will be Samsung'southward ultimate telephone?
- How to remap the Bixby push on Samsung Galaxy S21
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-s21-ultra-review-pros-and-cons
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