Explore YouTube’s New “1080p Premium” Before You Subscribe

If you don’t watch YouTube enough, YouTube Premium isn’t worth the monthly $11.99. But for avid viewers, Premium means no ads, and now a new feature called Premium 1080p . So what is 1080p Premium and is it worth it?

In short, 1080p Premium is a higher quality version of 1080p video . It’s not 4K, which already exists on the platform for free, but 1080p Premium has a higher bitrate than standard 1080p video.

The difference between video resolution and bitrate

To understand, you need to know the difference between resolution and bitrate. Video resolution is a measurement of the number of pixels contained in a particular video. A 1080p video, for example, is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels high, which means the video itself contains only 2,073,600 pixels. That’s a lot of pixels, but that doesn’t mean the video itself is of higher quality than, say, a lower-res 720p image. It simply refers to the number of pixels in a video.

The other half of the equation is bitrate, which is essentially the number of bits (or information) transferred over time. The higher the bitrate, the more information you have to work with. That’s why the bitrate plays such a big role in the quality of any particular video: you can watch a 1080p video, but if the bitrate is too low, those two million pixels won’t be enough to impress you.

How 1080p Premium video compares to 1080p

That’s where 1080p Premium comes in: the new resolution option offers a higher bitrate than standard 1080p video, meaning those 1080p clips will look better to YouTube Premium subscribers than to the rest of us. Unfortunately, YouTube shirks the exact bitrate that 1080p Premium operates at, but that’s okay considering the company doesn’t disclose the bitrate of its current resolutions either.

We can look at recommended download bitrates to get an idea of ​​what YouTube has traditionally dealt with: the company recommends downloading 1080p videos at 24, 25, or 30 frames per second (fps) at 8 Mbps, while 48, 50, or video at 60 frames per second must have a bit rate of 12 Mbps. 1080p HDR video must have a bitrate of 10 or 15 Mbps for the same frame rate, respectively.

But just because someone uploaded a 1080p video at 8Mbps doesn’t mean you’re watching a video at that bitrate. Either YouTube lowers the bitrate to save data, or uses what is known as variable bitrate : YouTube may not stream your video at one constant bitrate, but rather change the bitrate depending on the content of the video. The less movement or change in a particular scene, the lower the bitrate you need in order for the audience to perceive the quality. On the other hand, an increase in motion requires a higher bitrate, otherwise the quality will drop noticeably.

With 1080p Premium, this higher bitrate means 1080p video will look even better, especially in scenes with a lot of motion. You will unlock higher quality videos for channels that only download in 1080p, such as Kurzgesagt . However, it will not be available for videos uploaded at higher or lower resolutions. This means you cannot downscale 4K video to 1080p Premium or upscale 720p video.

As for how 1080p Premium compares to 4K video, we just don’t know as we can’t compare the 1080p Premium bitrate to YouTube’s current 4K bitrate. Hopefully this will change soon after practical comparisons.

This feature is also only available for iOS at this time, but there are plans to bring it to the web app as well. It’s definitely a nice perk for YouTube Premium subscribers, but until we get more data, it might not be the kind of feature that makes you spend an extra twelve dollars every month.