MKBHD 2022: “Blind Smartphone Camera Test”

The Best Smartphone Camera 2022!

It’s time to find out once with SCIENCE: What’s the best smartphone camera? https://vote.MKBHD.com

Marques Brownlee

Cool experiment! One of the issue with smartphone reviews are that you are getting a limited viewpoint, that of the reviewer, colored by their hidden preferences and subjective views. With a blind test though people don’t know the brand beforehand, so the results should be less influenced by preconceived expectations.

I voted last week as well, though I didn’t have the patience to go through all three categories. There are many rounds of voting to go through until a clear winner is established, so I tried to be as fast as possible picking in each individual pairing. I focused mainly on choosing the photo with the most accurate white balance (at least what I expect would be the correct white balance in that scene; for example the white on the sweater should be as close to white, and in the ‘standard’ section the windows should be grayish rather than blueish) and secondly the better exposure (I didn’t have a clear preference here for over- vs. underexposed; I decided in each case which one looked better to me).

My results for the blind smartphone camera test, first standard, then portrait category

The overall results are quite interesting, with the Pixel 6A and Pixel 7 Pro leading, and the iPhone 14 Pro not even in the top five! I actually had the iPhone 14 Pro as my second-favorite in the ‘standard’ category, but in ‘portrait’ it slipped in the bottom half of the ranking, and was replaced by an unlikely choice, the Zenfone 9. The good results of the Pixels likely reflect Google’s superior image processing software, as their imaging sensors are far from the most advanced currently available (too bad the phones are so… damn… ugly…).

As owner of a DSLR camera – and a Lightroom subscription to match – photo quality is not the most important aspect when choosing a smartphone. I take the more important shots on the camera, and even when I don’t carry it with me, I shoot in RAW mode on the phone, so that I can capture the most sensor data for later processing. But an interesting project nonetheless for many others who might use it do decide between two or more competing options.