Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra | First Review ✨ ALMOST PERFECT!

this is my first review of this gorgeous Samsung Galaxy s24 Ultra and today we're going to be taking our for spin in London and also around here where I live and I'm also going to be trying to answer some of the questions that you sent me so come with me actually before we head out to London let me share something with you which is you know kind of being bugging me a little bit not just as a tech reviewer but as a consumer as well and if I was considering to spend a lot of money on a device like

this you know I would be wanting to know about not just the nice things about it but about the problems as well and this is about the new display on the s24 this is the s23 ultra here I mean Samsung to me have been for a while right the king of smartphones displays they they are so so good but as I will show you in this video here throughout this video today I think there's something not quite right here the colors to me seem a little bit muted on on this new display the new display is extremel

y bright it's important to tell you this right it's one of the best displays I've ever used it's incredible for watching content the brightness is just out of this world but some have got this new unreflective coating here now which apparently is reducing the glare by 75% I'm always a little bit skeptical about these numbers but yes they have reduced glare it's Undisputed you can clearly see it's very noticeable there and I love that but the colors especially in the UI elements do seem a little

bit muted let me show you I'm not sure you can see in the camera but to me like the reds are almost like pink you know they're really like muted I'm exaggerating a little bit here but on my PR previous uh Samsung phones one of the first things that I do is go into advanced mode and reduce the greens and blues not by much just about couple of points but just because to my taste they've always been a little bit too saturated on the s24 ultra I actually had to leave the Vivid profile which is what

I like up to the max in the saturation here because I feel like it's just not as vibrant as before and I know this is probably not what you want to hear any pains me to say this stuff because you know I I don't like to point out issues I know how long things go into development and the production and these are beautiful devices and expensive products and it pains me to point out issues but it's my honest opinion right now on this first review and at the end of this video I'll also share a bit of

a mini run if you like about these reviews in general like you know as a consumer myself I'm getting a bit fed up with some of this stuff but I'll leave that to the end because keeping objective for now on the display I think is more important to you and if you interested in that stuff you can go later and watch at the end of the video I just think that when I look side by side against the s23 ultra as you can see here the colors do seem a little bit more vibrant on the s23 ultra from my bright

ness perspective and the overall feel though I do think the display on the s24 ultra is amazing is a delight to use it does feel great to the touch I personally still like the curve display just put it out there I know it's a almost like a 50/50 some people love it some people hate it some people are indifferent I'd probably be happy if they kept it but I do appreciate this more refined design I think refined is the right word here it does feel more refined especially with the titanium here it d

oes feel premium when I asked you in my community tab here on YouTube and on Instagram as well and Twitter what are the things that you want to know the majority of you asked me to test a few things the first one was the cameras specifically how the cameras compare against the s23 ultra and a lot of you ask me about the experience specifically uh in social media posting particularly on Instagram so starting with that I thought the posting on Instagram reals was you know very smooth very straight

forward because I now have two accounts in different languages I did notice the interface on on Instagram on the same mobile phone on the same version of the software looked different so there's something that Instagram seems to do depending on the account but that aside the selfie camera I have to say is not my favorite camera to be honest but here's an example of something that you probably do a lot like a handheld post let me know what you thought but my impression was that you know for a soc

ial media post this is more than okay but when you start to kind of look at the quality of the footage now two things stick out from me and some of you already pointed this out in the comments as well one was positive and two not so much so starting with the two negatives exposure the sky was overcast the day in London but we are losing a lot of detail here in the in the bright areas and we're basically just getting white you know it's completely blown out at the back in there even the colorful

displays in padil Circus I mean at that time there was a lot of white anyway but even when they they did show a little bit of color in there you know it's kind of yeah a little bit muted the second criticism I have on this camera is stabilization I did have about three coffees by that time shout out to the coffee people for keeping me going every day and the app itself is a little bit awkward you know in this mode to have to hold the the record button is really hard to keep it still but even so

the selfie camera to me just doesn't feel very stable in general now the positive thing about this experience was audio actually you know the quality of audio was something that really impressed me in this this part of London if you know it's An Extremely Loud place with traffic Sirens hundreds of people around me and sure you can pick those sounds up it's not completely removed but he managed without me doing anything you know to do a great job of isolating my voice here and you know kind of ke

ep the audio to what's important to to that recording but yes the exposure and stabilization could definitely be better here for me not happy with just one test I did do another side by side here so you can take a look for yourself in a different location different audio profile and much quieter place as well and with other devices too so you have a bit of a reference another very important aspect of the camera which you asked me to try as well was of course the 5x zoom on that much bigger senso

r and whether or not we are losing out by not having the 10x zoom on a smaller sensor the first thing I noticed I haven't watched any of the reviews by the way on this so I could be completely wrong so I'm just sharing what I experienced the first thing I noticed was sharpness the 10x zoom on the s23 AO to me l looks ever so slightly sharper is it going to matter to 99 out of my 100 pictures that I take or that you take from a zoom perspective in particular definitely not now where it really mat

ters to me which and I think probably to you as well is how good the picture looks and this is where I think that the new telephoto pictures do look much better this was already my favorite lens right this 10x lens on the s23 ultra but having that much bigger sensor seems to be producing better photos you know who knew right I don't know about you but that to me matters more it seems obvious and based on the comments that I'm getting this is something that is going to matter to a lot of people s

o that that's my opinion right now of course things could change right but in my first review this is how I'm seeing it and to summarize it I think we are losing a tiny bit of sharpness at 10x hopefully you can see in this video here I'll share the original photos as well like I always do but we're losing that sharpness in favor of much better looking photos in my next video which I'm already working on we are going to see how this Compares against the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the pixel as well but

I wanted to share this now with you because I know so many of you asked me this and I know how important that is for you when we look at the regular photos kind of the normal photos I a normal dad like me would take you know what the s24 ultra is producing is amazing I can already see and I hope you can see as well there's a considerable difference here in the colors in the depth of the shots I'm really really impressed here you know I wasn't really expecting much to be honest you I was like ho

w much better can photos get on smartphones clearly there was a jump still to be made and they did that these are all unedited photos that you know I'm showing here right now and you can tell right the colors on the s24 orra just look better to me anyway and really closer to how I remember those scenes not saying the s23 ultra photos are terrible not by any means but we do get a jumping quality here when it comes to Portrait shots I think that's another kind of very important part of you know if

you got kids and pets and things like that I think they are now top of the pile in comparison with other phones early days but right now it feels to me that they are Samsung are really really delivering on portrait I mean we need a better looking model here but when you start looking at the detail you know whether it was 1X 2x didn't matter too much the distance I was using here but the background separation is really really good I'd like to see a more gradual separation but it's starting to lo

ok so close now to professional camera that most people won't notice those things right you you do need sometimes you know proper glass like proper lens to to get that that effect but I don't know with software with all this AI stuff we might start to see you know a little bit of a more gradual uh the fallof you know between you and and the the background the iPhone and the pixel also do a great job here but I do think Samsung are are ahead now we're going to see that in the next video of course

we'll still struggle with certain objects like you know glass and plants some people like with lots of hair I don't have that problem for people in general now people's faces which is what this is for really it's close to Perfection for me in good lighting of course we're going to get decent results right that's obvious but how does the s24 ult behave when we have poor lighting overall I think the bigger sensor is again making a huge difference here I haven't done any astrophotography yet I'm g

oing to try that as well and it's early days but I can totally see an improvement here again in low light situations I do want to test this a lot more though and you know have already done some comparisons for my next video which are quite revealing nothing alarming so don't worry but I do hope these examples that I'm showing you here today are are helping you already now before we move on to video quality which is something that's quite close to my heart uh and AI features as well and everythin

g else I wanted to call out a potential problem around durability I've gone for the titanium violet color and the very first day it got scratched I mean it's a it's not a major scratch of course you know you'll be I'll be using a case like I always do there's a few cases that I'm testing already but on the first day I was being extremely careful with it and when it wasn't in my hands like this it was going straight into into this beautiful leather case here very soft inner lining this felt you k

now it's you couldn't get something softer to protect it but maybe it was my wedding ring or perhaps attaching it to a game ball again all those things have rubber protection and I'm not using not chucking in a bag or anything like that I just don't know how it happened I do this a lot with other phones right the s23 ultra here a year on not a single scratch I mean it's lighter but no scratches in here same with the iPhone 15 Pro Max and the pixel had it for a few months no issues whatsoever aft

er a day to get this on the s24 ultra is disappointing maybe I'm just unlucky I'll be sharing more on my favorite cases for it as well but just wanted to put us out there if you're kind of considering not having a case maybe you need it because to me you know I didn't need to go full Jerry rig everything style here with with a hammer and stuff to discover that this back is not the most scratch resistant now when it comes to video quality this is something that I value a lot the s23 ultra was alr

eady incredible in [Music] so I was to see how behaved and you know have they improved on video and boy did they improve in 4k 30 everything looks so good I love you know how natural the background looks and also how Samsung seems to be dealing with sharpness here you know it's very refreshing to see you know a video out of a smartphone that is not overshot sharpened cuz it's so easy these days with smartphones to you know they think that they have to overdo in sharpness to get very clear like i

mages uh which can be great for architecture and objects and products but not so good for filming people so I think the balance here is so good I would say again almost perfect to really go a step further I know I do like using this ND filter especially in a day like today is very bright they really make a big difference for me but for most people you're not going to need those I will leave some links to my favorite ones down below some of the the reviews that I did about them as well but I'm re

ally impressed but that's not enough Samsung went a bit further here with the AK video I did spot on issue with AK though we'll talk about that in a bit but the overall quality is insane it's nothing short of just yeah I'm in awe when I'm watching this I mean the word is overused but it is awesome all the clips that you're seeing here were shot on AK handheld and of course right the editing software that I use will downscale it to 4K YouTube would then compress it but when you watch this nativel

y on the device or on an 8K display or even on a 4K display I mean it's literally jawdropping that we can do this on a smartphone I still think this is incredible the level of detail the colors everything you know what really surprised me actually here was was the stabilization on AK traditionally you know it's been one of those modes that can be quite finicky up to a point where you might think it's a gimmick we're definitely seeing a huge progression here really is incred incredible and I know

you're probably asking what was the problem that you mentioned then what did you say that was an issue with AK well it's to do with the 5x lens I appreciate that we now have this mode we didn't have that before it's nice to have this extra you know kind of zoom on AK but I noticed this tiny little Jitters when recording it's not just me the handheld aspect is probably not helping but it's been doing it quite a bit in in that mode in in different scenes so I will be doing more research and make

sure that you know I don't have a 4y device or anything like that because I'm that unlucky sometimes and I'm hoping that if this is a real issue that this can get fixed by software updates if it feels softw to me and Samsung if you're watching you know I'm happy to share the original Clips as well still a nice day outside let's go back out there from an audio quality perspective this is the main camera and you can see you know there's quite a lot of noise here there's ducks there's people walkin

g around and you know just wind noise as well it's not that windy to be honest but there's always a little bit that gets picked up and I'm going to try the same using a uh professional microphone we're going to try that now and this is the audio quality from uh the microphone the kind of is connected via USBC and then Bluetooth to the microphone on my shirt here so so you can have an idea of the difference uh in sound this is using the main camera as well and of course uh the sound will sound a

little bit different if you use the selfie camera and um yeah let me know what you thought but I think the s24 ultra audio is excellent already I mean you could 100% use it without a problem you know if you're close to it no issues of course adding a professional microphone like the hollyland that I'm using here you know has a lot of advantages the s24 ultra itself was nose Louge but you're going to get a lot more and if you're using the phone for Content creation you might want to consider an e

xtendo microphone if you are moving around a little bit lots more to come on video quality and you don't want to miss my comparison here with the 15 Pro Max I got a couple of bomshells on that video nothing alarming but you know you'll be awesome if you subscribe because I think you're going to enjoy that as well actually if you enjoying this video right here please leave a thumbs up as that really helps the channel it helps me get discovered out there even if you think it's a small gesture it d

oes mean a lot to me artificial intelligence features is something else that you wanted me to test and when we think about it right Samsung put a hell of a lot of focus on this right now one of the features that I'm using already a lot is this writing assistant holy moly I mean this is awesome I'm always like juggling things throughout my day right messaging people from all sorts of different backgrounds as well as writing a lot you know to do with different things in my life right sometimes I n

eed to write an Instagram post which is like a social media like with hashtags and things like that lots of emojis other times I need to update my clients you know completely outside of YouTube in a tech business in a more professional way and other times I could just be chatting to a friend and I love how much time this is already saving me you know I can just type the core of the message and let writing assist do the rest for me and that to me is where AI can really really help I mean I saw so

me of the stuff in on the pixel but not at this level this is definitely an upgrade here is already correcting my grammar I wish he did that live as I'm talking to you but it's translating things is helping me respond to comments in these videos it's fantastic and definitely definitely not a gimmick cirle to search though I'll be honest with you this one is closer to a gimmick but it's not really a gimmick I mean it's it's been useful already and I can see this being very helpful to a lot of peo

ple but it feels to me right now like one of those things that you try when the phone is new and you're like oh my God look at this thing right I remember cinematic mode on the iPhone for example oh we've got this but then you you kind of forget it you know it's kind of it's there and you never use it but I feel like this one when you do need it in future you will be very pleased that you have it because I tested it out there just creating some scenarios it was just the speed at which it did it

and the level of information that it generated it wasn't just a Wikipedia return right it was more like relevant to the object or relevant to the place I think think there's a lot of potential there one thing that's kind of annoying it's at the back of my mind and I'm sure at the back of yours as well is one is by the end of 25 they might start charging people for these features but there's also the point of Hang On that doesn't feel like resource intensive that feels to me like a bit of softwar

e that could go on any phone so I'm thinking you know do you really need the s24 ultra to get those features talking of which generative AI when photo editing yeah this is again definitely not a gimmick in the example here removing this person from the photo was an absolute Breeze very very easy to do you can do this with your finger of course but I find this a perfect use case for the Spen it lets you really be precise with your selection which will help AI in the end right the better your sele

ction the better the result will be at the end that's been my experience and just to prove that point don't get too like over excited with your selections though because it's not magic right one could argue that a red London bus like a double decker bus is fairly recognizable but to to be fair I was asking a lot here with multiple selections I'm sure if I was kind of spending more time being a little bit more patient with my selections and editing bit by bit you could actually achieve better res

ults here but yeah I just thought it's funny that yeah see how how far can we push AI sometimes right the bottom line is this is really impressive and is not a gimmick now one of the things that no one really asked me to to review but I personally was curious about it so I thought I I'll review it anyway is the speakers I really care about this right I watch content a lot on my on my smartph phones sometimes I wear ear butts but most of the time I'm just holding the phone or have it propped up s

omewhere and I've complained about this before on the s22 ultra on pretty much every phone I complain about the audio quality because to me they're not as good as the iPhone for example the iPhone 14 pro Max had lots of issues but sounded better to me than the s22 s23 ultra and the same with the 15 Pro Max I think that right now sounds better than the s23 ultra and I know this stuff is subjective but here's a little side by side for [Music] you late November Midsummer at the end of the world Pat

agonia the southernmost tip of the Americas late November Midsummer at the end of the world Patagonia the southernmost tip of the Americas let me know what you thought but I think Samsung finally did it it sounds better now it's Fuller to me it's louder which is not a big achievement I think it was already louder at 100% although you lost quality back in in the s23 ultra now it's louder and it's clearer Fuller better I will do a bit more research on this and see if they've actually changed the h

ardware here you know perhaps the difference in material is helping the casing the glass there's a lot of changes here even the cutouts are different right so there a lot maybe the whole thing is what's making it sound better and I really appreciate that thank you Samsung that is one of the things that I wanted to improve now something else that you might care about is gaming yes I played a few games and tested it to see know how hot it gets from a gaming performance perspective you know is it i

s he struggling to do anything and as you can imagine right I've got nothing but praise it's been awesome even the more demanding games here have been extremely smooth to play no issues have I seen any indication of thermal throttling or overheating yeah I mean I've played these games for so long on so many smartphones there's definitely a little bit of throttling when it gets a bit warm but it's more of a a benchmark thing you will notice that if you're measuring it but your eyes won't see if y

ou know what I mean the experience when you're playing the game doesn't change I'm sure there's a level of of that happening on any phone you know to keep the temperature stable but you don't notice any huge drops in fps or any screen dimming like we've seen in other phones in the past did it get warm hot yeah absolutely but nothing out of the ordin area you know after a good hour session of playing G impact I don't actually like that game but you know it's a good game to test smartphones I was

getting about fully deg CSUS after about good 40 minutes 45 minutes but it never went above that I've added game booster plus as well and turned that on but I'm not sure what that's doing and even if it's needed right now and I do think the phone could even afford to get a little bit warmer if he needs to maybe a couple degrees more so that Vapor chamber whatever it's doing right now that cooling seems to be doing its job really well and that's nothing short of impr iive I will be testing this a

lot more with things like you know rate tracing some examples of more high-intensive games but first impressions yeah pretty happy with what I've seen thanks for sticking with me and I'll make sure to keep bringing these videos for you in the same way of just me being honest about the tech arm reviewing while you wait for the next one there's a cool video that I did he about some behind scenes stuff that you might enjoy and lots more of smartphone comparisons and reviews here as well see you [M

usic] soon hey we going to make it beig I say we going to make it be just stay in there stay in