Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G review

Samsung goes a step further with the Ultra.

Price: £1149

If the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G were a burger, it'd come with everything. Cheese, bacon, the best organic greens, flecks of gold leaf for effect, and the sweetest gherkins from around the world.

While some people dislike pickles, there's nothing to dislike about the extras included with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G. You get two zoom cameras, one of which has a frankly unbelievable 10x optical zoom, as well as Samsung's own Exynos 2100 chipset, which appears to be 20% faster than its predecessor.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G's variable refresh rate 120Hz OLED screen is also more useful this time around, but is the £1149 starting price worth it?

In some ways, the brand's lineup of pricey 2021 phones is worse than last year's. It wants us to pay nearly £800 for a plastic Samsung Galaxy S21, and the Samsung Galaxy S21+ lacks the lovely curved glass that the company has used for nearly a decade.

Is it true that phones, like life in general, are getting worse by the year? The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra disagrees.

This is Samsung's one true ultra-high-end mobile phone for early 2021, with one of the best-curved glass screens in the world and cameras that allow you to see what your neighbors are doing while you're locked down.

Only one major component is missing: a charger. But when the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra costs less than last year's Galaxy S20 Ultra, we can accept that it deserves to compete with the iPhone 12 Pro Max.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Design:

Enough with the compliments. Let's start with a groan.

The first things you'll notice about the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra aren't good. At 227g, this phone is massive, and you'll notice it right away unless you're already using a hulking great thing like the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

Not everyone will fall in love with the camera housing, which sticks from the back like a piece of Brutalist architecture. But give it a minute because there are reasons to like it.

There's a lot going on behind the camera's small aluminum stage, and most Galaxy S21 Ultra cases are designed to fit around the bump. This means it'll look less like it's in a case if you buy a nice one in the first place.

Most importantly, we like that the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra does not look like every other phone on the market. Ours is all-black, and Samsung has created a plain black phone that isn't boring.

Those oversized camera rings, arranged like an Instagrammer's aerial photo of a tapas dinner, scream "tech," and if you're not buying a phone as expensive as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra for that reason, go for something less expensive.

It's a shame we don't get some of the two-tone color options seen on lower-end Galaxy S21 family members, instead opting for silver and black. Clearly, this is Samsung's super serious big-boy phone for adults.

Tip: Samsung offers some exclusive colors from samsung.com, including the popular Brown. Examine them.

Aside from a slightly more eye-catching design, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is exactly what we expected. It's large and heavy, made of high-quality materials like curved Gorilla Glass Victus and gloss-painted aluminum, but there's another surprise.

The S-Pen, the stylus series used by Samsung's Note phones, is supported by the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. You can get this bundled with Samsung's own S-View cover, but if the idea appeals to you, we recommend purchasing a slimmer, standard case and an S-Pen separately.

Yes, an S-Pen would be nice, but we don't even get an adapter with the phone, so that's a pipe dream.

We tested the S-Pen on Note 20 with the Galaxy S21 Ultra and found it to be excellent. When you press the side button, the S-Pen nav menu appears, just like it would on a Note phone, and pressure sensitivity and tilt recognition work as expected in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

The Note's Air gestures and remote control functions are inaccessible. Apparently, an S-Pen Pro will be released later, but you can bet it will be significantly more expensive than the £34.99 standard S-Pen for the Galaxy S21 Ultra. To be honest, we've only used the S-magic Pen's wand gestures once, during a review.

This is the S-Pen designed for how we actually use it — scattered doodling sessions — rather than the studious note-taking and handwriting we expected when the Note series first arrived.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Display:

The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has a curved 6.8-inch OLED screen. That curve isn't as prominent as it is on the OnePlus 8 Pro or the Oppo Find X2 Pro.

A dramatic bend makes a display appear futuristic and fancy, but it's probably good news for image quality because a lighter bend means less clear dimming in the last millimeter or two of the screen.

The majority of the elements you'll notice are the same as last year, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. This is a 1440p screen with fantastic color depth, killer contrast, and 1500 nits brightness, which means the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra can withstand bright days at least as well as the iPhone 12 Pro Max and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

The only difference for 2021 is the refresh rate. Last year's Galaxy S20 Ultra also had a 120Hz screen, but you had to choose between that refresh rate and the maximum 1440p brightness.

You can have both this year, presumably because this is now an ultra-adaptive screen. That is, it can change the number of times the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra's image is refreshed on the fly, from 10 to 120. Why? It helps in preserving battery power.

Last year, the OnePlus 8 Pro offered a similar experience, but it appears that the Galaxy S21 Ultra has caught up.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra cameras:

There's a lot more exciting stuff going on in the cameras of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. Samsung invested a lot in zoom technology, even more so than in the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.

A 10MP 3x zoom and a 10MP 10x zoom are included. This isn't the "fake" hybrid zoom found in Samsung's Galaxy S21 and S21+. You get twice the genuine lens magnification found in other top Androids to date.

Is the S21 a world-class banger? This is the part that made our jaws drop when Samsung announced it.

In general, yes. When compared to the Oppo Find X2 Pro, the best pericope zoom camera we could lay our hands on at the time, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra renders more detail when zoomed in to 20-30x. Try it with a 2x or 3x zoom and you'll get photographic Ready Brek.

Stills look great at 15x zoom, and we've been blown away by some of the images captured by the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, such as the beautiful and complicated patterns in someone's iris and the somewhat less beautiful micro-veins on their eyeball. Check out our gallery.

The 10x zoom can be used as a remote macro camera, which is quite impressive. Most other phones simply do not have this option.

The only real issue we have with the super zoom is that it does not engage at 10x, resulting in mushy digital zoom shots. This, however, smells like a launch software bug. Oh, and even with that insane lens, Samsung's Space Zoom 100x images are still satisfactory.

The Galaxy S20 Ultra, which has a higher-resolution 4x zoom, introduced this feature.

Although 100x images have improved slightly, they are still mushy in the extreme.

What about the primary camera? The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has a 108MP sensor that produces 12MP images. There is no significant improvement in image quality here. You still get the great, clean, and contrasty photos we expect from a top Samsung, albeit with a tendency to over-adjust the color saturation for some tastes.

The most noticeable difference is in HDR, which is used in photography to bring out shadow detail without blowing out the highlights. Samsung appears to push it even further in the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

This phone almost never takes a dull-looking photo, but even the darkest shadowy areas can look a little smushy at times. It's a fantastic sensor, but it's still a phone sensor with teeny-tiny sensor pixels and an ok native dynamic range.

In low light, Samsung uses the multi-exposure technique found in every high-end phone these days to mitigate this. You may have to wait a few seconds and keep the phone still, but the results are self-evident.

When it comes to low-light performance, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra doesn't quite match the Huawei P40 Pro, but you can use a night mode with the ultrawide camera, 3x zoom, and even 10x zoom. That kind of adjustment is more important in the real world.

Oh, and the ultrawide camera outperforms the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It could be the best ultrawide available on any phone right now. It's also great for macro shots, as is the main camera, which allows you to focus much closer than almost every other top Android.

The list is endless: the video is impressive. You can shoot at up to 8K resolution at 24fps with stabilization. It has a usable 8K video mode, but most of you should stick to 4K at 60fps or lower because 8K uses a sensor crop and the motion at 4K is significantly smoother.

Want to completely avoid making any decisions? There is a mode called Single Take for this. This takes a lot of photos and short video clips while you just hold the camera or move it around.

It may appear to be a gimmick, but ask a friend to do something silly while Single Take works its magic, and you'll end up with a slew of shareable moments, complete with quick-fire editing and soundtrack. It's fluff, but delicious fluff.

Let's quickly touch on the selfie camera before we end up writing a Haynes manual on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. It's fantastic. You get a 40MP sensor that uses high resolution to provide two fields of view. The detail is excellent in daylight, and it, like all other cameras on the phone, supports the Samsung Night mode. This camera array is simply insanely powerful.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra Performance:

It's time to move on. Unless you're really into numbers and know what a 3200 Geekbench 5 score means, there's usually not much interest in a high-end phone's power. By the way, that's what the Galaxy S21 Ultra earns, but there's something else you should know about it.

The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra with an Exynos 2100 processor is available in the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. Those in the United States and China will receive a Snapdragon 888, which has more graphics power output than the Exynos.

If we had to choose, we'd go with the Snapdragon, but the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra still runs like a dream, has up to 512GB storage (enough that we don't mind the lack of a MicroSD slot), and Fortnite even supports 90fps mode.

Sure, it doesn't hit that unless you use the highest graphics settings, and it spends a lot of time well below 60fps, but phones don't have the graphics power of an Xbox Series X, even after what Samsung and Apple's sales pitches might suggest.

The main concern we had with the Exynos processor in the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra was battery life. Last year's top Samsungs didn't fare well, so will this one?

It has the same 5000mAh battery as the Galaxy S20 Ultra from last year. We've found that unless you use the 1440p and 120Hz modes frequently, it usually lasts a full day. This can still cause the battery to crash.

Is there, however, a genuine improvement here? We used an app called Generic Battery Drainer (sounds catchy, doesn't it?) to see how the Galaxy S21 Ultra and slightly older Galaxy Note 20 handled a half-hour with the screen on, the CPU working hard, and Bluetooth/GPS/Wi-Fi all turning off.

The S21 Ultra lost 11% of its charge, while Note 20 lost 16%. That's a significant difference that can't be explained solely by an increase in battery capacity.

The good news is that these new Samsung processors appear to be more efficient than previous generations, resulting in solid, if not excellent, battery life, even though phones like the Oppo Find X2 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and Huawei P40 Pro continue to outsell them.

In terms of charging speed, Samsung is also far behind. The OnePlus 8 Pro and the latest Oppos can charge at more than twice the rate, but if you're upgrading from an older phone, you'll probably need to purchase a new adapter to get the full 25W charge rate.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra conclusion:

For 2021, Samsung has pared back some aspects of the Galaxy S21 lineup, but the Galaxy S21 Ultra gets away with just one: there is no charger included, as with the Apple iPhone 12 series.

Sure, we get a Samsung processor instead of the Snapdragon we'd prefer, but it's a little easier on the battery and has enough power to keep us happy.

However, there is only one convincing reason to purchase this phone. The camera on the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra is incredible. It's most likely the most versatile phone camera for still photography we've ever used.

The draw isn't the raw image quality, which doesn't improve significantly, but the fact that this phone doesn't care if your subject is 3cm or 300m away.

You may not be able to get close to the action right now due to the bloody virus, but you can still do so with the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.

Tech specs

Screen: 6.8in 3200 x 1440 120Hz WQHD+ Dynamic Amoled

Storage: 128/256/512GB

RAM: 12/16GB

Processor: Exynos 2100

OS: Android 11

Camera: 108MP main + 12MP ultrawide + 10MP telephoto (10x & 3x optical zoom) + 40MP selfie camera

Build: Gorilla Glass Victus + IP68 water resistance

Network connectivity: 5G

Battery: 5000mAh

Dimensions: 165.1 x 75.6 x 8.9 mm

Weight:  227g

TechliciousOfficial says...

Score: 4/5                                                                                                                        ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰

An Android with an incredible camera array that allows you to capture moments that other phones will simply miss.

• Good Stuff

+ Fantastic camera zoom capability

+ Screen is smooth and ultra-bright.

+ Supports the S-Pen in the same way that the Galaxy Note does.

• Bad Stuff

− No charger: a low-cost move

− Some alternatives have a longer battery life between charges.

− Exynos version in the UK is not as powerful as upcoming Snapdragon phones.