Take This Quiz to Find Out Which Smartphone Camera You Like Best
Smartphones these days have great cameras, to the point where it’s hard to make a wrong choice. However, if you’re like most people, you’re a bit loyal to one brand, especially if that brand is the iPhone and you’ll never get a chance to see what else is out there. Your current smartphone may not actually be taking your favorite photos, but without shopping, how would you know?
Marques Brownlee aka MKBHD wants to help. At the end of each year, the MKBHD team conducts a blind smartphone camera test to see which smartphone photos people actually prefer. They started the tradition back in 2017 comparing the top five smartphones of the year against each other in a YouTube video (without telling you who was who, of course), but the test has grown exponentially since then. The list now covers the 16 best smartphones of the year, with millions of people voting for their favorites.
The point of the blind test is to remove the prejudices that many of us may have towards particular brands. If you are an iPhone fan, you can choose iPhone as the best camera if you know what kind of camera it is. If you’re partial to Samsung, one of the Galaxy could be your winner. By forcing you to compare photos as they are, you have a unique chance to see which images you really prefer. Of course, you can still choose a smartphone brand that you already own, but with 16 smartphones to choose from, chances are you’ll pick a favorite you don’t expect.
However, this year’s test is a little different. For the past few years, MKBHD has been testing on Twitter, allowing both fans and those who stumble across the tweets to vote for their favorite directly from within the app. For 2022, the test is now hosted on its own website . This means that the coverage of the test may be more limited than before, but the overall experience has improved significantly.
How the MKBHD Smartphone Blind Test Works
The test is divided into three categories: Standard, which compares photos with a typical angle and lighting; Low-Light, which compares images taken in darker conditions; and portrait mode, which compares the portrait mode capabilities of all smartphones. Each test takes between five and 10 minutes, and you can choose between two photos at a time. You may find this similar to an eye test: some comparisons will have a clear winner, while others are much more subtle. After all, smartphone cameras are pretty good .
Now you don’t have to vote for every photo to determine the winner. In a test, you only have to choose between multiple comparisons before you can move on. However, the more you vote, the more accurate your result will be. If you have time, answer as many as you can (or take the test at all). You’ll know how far you’ve come from the progress bar that appears with each test.
Whenever you choose to finish, the test will assign you a letter. No, it’s not the name of some obscure smartphone you’ve never heard of. Instead, the MKBHD team assigned a unique letter to each tested smartphone. After they close the test, they will announce which letters correspond to which phone, so keep an eye on MKBHD’s YouTube channel for more.
Since most of us only have one smartphone at a time and don’t have the flexibility or patience to go through 16 different smartphone reviews, a blind camera test is probably the best way to find out and compare how other smartphones take pictures. Who knows: you might end up choosing a $300 budget phone over your $1,000 flagship.