Gadgetory

LG has some pretty big shoes to fill the v10 was a beast of a camera phone and now several manufacturers are playing with dual sensor setups we've dug deep into our usual run of test setups and it's time to take a closer look at the LG v 20 buckle up folks we have a lot of ground to cover and I'm gonna move pretty quick first for you specs junkies you can pause the video here to see what hardware we're working with now with that out of the way right off the bat we're a bit disappointed in LG's auto image processing the phone tends to veer a bit overexposed and unlike previous LG's the saturation seems to be bumped up a bit higher than we might like Southern California has beautiful blue skies and warm afternoon light but this blue is certainly exaggerated the phone redeems itself on greens and earth tones very accurately captured here and yellows are stretched just to the clipping point but we don't quite lose fine details in this flower unfortunately where the v10 was fantastic at capturing reds the extra saturation and exposure here pushes the b20 slightly away from the accuracy we used to enjoy we can still see the difference between these blossoms better than on many other phones but the v20 is starting to sizzle these warmer colors lastly the phone does an excellent job metering for this white flower and it's easy to see the details and the pedals which are just slightly off white getting around the extra saturation the phone does a very good job handling white balance these photos look appropriately warm given the afternoon angle of the Sun a thankfully in shade the V 20 doesn't seem to overcorrect often or push the shot to cold output is still consistent with the surrounding afternoon light looking at the photo files JPEGs range from three to eleven megabytes in size with most landing around four RAW files are just under 23 Meg capturing RAW files as helpful as LG's JPEG compression can make your images kind of splotchy editing on your own will preserve fine details much better also raw gives you a safety net for those times you might over or under expose walking back an image even two whole stops we can still recover quite a bit of info we've covered the app layout in a separate video and this is still one of our favorite phone camera layouts it's a shame that some features like the simple capture mode are buried in settings but with a focus on manual controls and options the v20 camera app is easily one of the best for people of all skill levels our biggest complaint has to do with the second screen ticker display in the camera app this hold shortcuts to your three main mode but if while you're shooting you get notifications you can't switch modes until this screen clears them we don't remember the v10 hijacking camera options like this now looking at the zoom LG is continuing the dual sensor experiment from the g5 instead of Apple's second sensor zoom we get an ultra wide view it's well integrated into the zoom range but there is a bit more of a pop when you transfer from the normal view to the wide this wide-angle shooter is fun to play with but there is quite a bit of barrel distortion you'll want to keep your horizon near the middle of the frame and watch how it pulls into a smile as we move the ground lower the smaller sensor and aperture on this wide-angle shooter means night shots will be darker and gray near as for the practicality of this hardware I likely wouldn't use this for any professional output but for my own family photos and videos wide-angle shots have proven more useful chasing our daughter around than zooming in your mileage will of course vary speaking of zooming in the v20 only has a software crop zoom at full reach we get an overly sharpened mess but somewhere around half the zoom range the camera still has enough resolution to play with from the sensor to deliver some pretty clean looking results on paper the v20 sensor is slightly smaller than the v10 but the change in aspect ratio seems to have made up some of the surface area discrepancy when looking at macro shots both have nearly the same minimum focusing distance almost tying the galaxy s7 for getting up close and the background blur is nearly identical you can achieve some really pretty bouquet from the main camera and you'll only see the Samsung pull ahead when you zoom in really close even when pixel peeping it's tough to see practical differences now no one is catching up to Samsung this year for focusing speed but the v20 remains sure-footed and accurate we rarely face problems with miss focusing and the app was responsive trying to shift focus quickly between these two objects the only issue seems to be the extra focused pull we see when moving focus farther the phone will overshoot and roll back in which makes this a little less useful for folks who might want to Rack focus between two subjects the Achilles heel for LG's has always been the lens quality and the v20 only subtly improves on that issue this glass is still quite prone to fringing flaring ghosting and small distortions this is most noticeable when cropping and it's markedly better than the g5 but we'd still like to see a little more improvement moving forward but we are happy to see noticeable improvements in HDR output even though the phone is still prone to over exposing the multiple exposure processing does a much better job of preventing clipped highlights and will more consistently balance shadow detail against brighter areas of the frame LG hasn't quite caught Apple or Google here but this is much more useful output okay so you can shoot panoramas from the ultra wide camera but you probably shouldn't it's just too wide to stitch together properly a panorama is from the main camera our solid if a bit mid-pack no really egregious stitching errors but some transitions are still a little bit more abrupt than several flagship competitors now spending a little time with the selfie shooter and I still hate selfies LG only has one front-facing camera on this V which seems to be another ultra wide which can be cropped in for a more normal field of view expect most shots to be a bit overexposed and video is somewhat poor oddly we're seeing dropped frames and quite a bit of rolling shutter jello at least we have this great auto mode I mean beauty mode to turn you into a horrific plastic mess of a mannequin looking at nighttime performance this camera is a solid low light option the optical image stabilization works really well for Stills and I was able to consistently pull off handheld shots at night down to 1/5 of a second when trying to hold steady left up to the app though again there's a consistent tendency to overexpose which means jacking up the iso noise much higher than we need to dialing back a half to a full stop depending on lighting can help a lot in preserving image integrity the v20 almost nails are creepy gate output is just a little cooler than the scene looks like in real life and shooting auto I wasn't able to get a clean shot of this flower in almost no light but man you setting the shutter and ISO we end up with a much sharper image which can then be brightened a little for an overall better effect and I always have to show off that manual controls allow for some fun effects like long exposures of streaking taillights you can't do this with an iPhone or a pixel out of the box moving over to video the v20 captures a shockingly high bitrate at maximum settings which eats around four hundred and sixteen megabytes of storage per minute and the color processing doesn't seem to be quite as aggressive as when compared to shooting still photos from the main camera we see few compression artifacts molesting the uniform blue of the sky but switch to the wide camera in the afternoon and the noise is somewhat distracting overall we're treated to some terrific video but this camera really wants you to control the scene by adjusting the manual settings it's actually pretty easy to work this footage into projects somewhere around 70% of my iPhone coverage was shot from a V 20 as was our entire axon 7 mini unboxing the big benefit is shutter speed control where you can properly lock exposure like you can for Stills like on this water scene cranking the shutter up to one four thousandth of a second we get this razor-sharp water spray in every frame of footage slowing that shutter down to one 80th of a second and using my cheap sunglasses as a filter we see how much blurrier each frame is being able to control not only white balance but really dialing in specific exposure settings makes this an excellent companion camera to a proper mirrorless production setup but the story on stabilization will likely disappoint some who were curious about this phone the V 20 is better than the v10 and LG has reigned in some of the jello wobble of last year's phone using only optical image stabilization while walking there's still plenty of a but it's not as seasick inducing switching down to HD recording means we can use software stabilization to help but the final output is still a fair bit twitchy er than what Google or Apple is currently supplying also it was fairly uncommon and impossible to predict but for a couple shots while trying to hold still the hardware stabilization started acting up and getting a little funky out of over 20 gigabytes worth of files this affected three very short clips and what would good video be without good audio the v20 continues LG's improvements utilizing a three microphone array which can be tuned directionally and adds a low-cut filter to help reduce Rumble and a limiter which can be used as a safety net against sudden loud spikes in your recordings also new for the camera app when shooting the audio mode not only delivers meters you get a proper waveform of the audio being captured this is incredibly handy for monitoring your results now an exposure test moving from dark to bright and back the v20 handles changes in light fairly well making even-handed adjustments and subtle white balance shifts none of which are jarring its returning to dark that we see some shutter speed adjustments that give off a buzzy quality but overall this is better than most flagship phones and is a nice improvement over the LG v10 unfortunately slow motion is still kind of a mess 120 frames per second 720p really shouldn't be this taxing but we still see dropped frames in the final edited output from this phone is pretty blurry with abrupt transitions moving from real time to slow-mo LG still has a lot of work to do here lastly there are some fun features using the multi camera setup the pop-out feature will use the wide-angle camera as a backdrop for the main camera creating an interesting shadowbox effect you can also create easy collages directly from the app using all three cameras but these are only saved at the resolution of the phone screen it's fun working directly from the cameras in the moment but standalone apps to create a collage might deliver higher quality results so let's wrap this up where's that leave us with the cameras on the LGB 20 it's overly simplistic to say this phone is only for people who like adjusting manual settings for the most part images delivered under full auto are very good if falling shy of the excellent auto photos we get from a Galaxy s7 or the extremely consistent image processing we find on iPhones slow motion video landing is the only truly unusable aspect of the V 20 what this phone has that few others can match is as broad a scope embracing photographers of all skill levels no one else really seems interested in offering a simple mode anymore even if LG buried it this year it's still in the app many phones will hold your hand through Auto modes but few will grow with you as well moving through intermediate and advanced photography concepts it is true that this camera comes to life once you start adjusting a few settings on your own instead of leaving every aspect up to a computer but that's pretty much true of all cameras we might grin at that friend who brags about their nice camera but only shoots in green box mode the b20 might ask for your input but it reward you for participating in the process of making your own photos and videos while I have a lot of fun with this camera personally I've never used a phone camera or microphones which could as seamlessly blend into my actual work I don't claim to be any great cinematographer but seeing not a single comment that there was anything different or distracting about this footage compared to how I normally shoot well that was very encouraging the v20 easily fulfilling a role I could never count on a samsung pixel or iPhone to achieve as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more reviews like these and check out our previous real camera reviews to see how the v20 stacks up to the competition for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos bag now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review you