so the new Galaxy S24 lineup is really impressive. But now, more than any previous generation, Samsung blurred the lines between the premium one, the Ultra, and the Plus, and the regular, making it a lot more difficult to decide which one's actually the best one to get. Should you save several hundred on the cheaper one that has a lot of the same specs, or you want to go one step above to the Plus or one step above that to the Ultra? And in this video, after having tested these pretty extensively for the past couple of days, I want to talk about the differences between them and help you decide which is actually the best one to buy, because honestly, it is pretty surprising when you look at how similar these are and what the subtle differences are that weren't actually mentioned in the keynote or even on the spec sheets for most part. So let's start off with the obvious difference. These obviously have very different displays, but out of the box, they actually have the same resolution. They all have FHD+ (Full HD), which is basically a 1080p display.

these phones. But if you go into settings, the S24 Plus and the S24 Ultra can have Quad HD. Now I think that's interesting that Samsung decided to do that. My speculation is that it is a battery trade-off. They want to kind of by default give you the lower resolution because most people won't actually notice the resolution difference, but most people will notice the battery difference. So for the battery test in this video, I'm turning them up to Quad HD, the full resolution, because I think that is what they really should be running. Now another thing that you'll really notice is that they do all have a lot of the same specs on the display. It's a Super AMOLED 2 display. They have the same peak brightness of 2600 nits, which is really incredible, really easy to see out in broad daylight. And they also all have 120 Hz fast refresh rate on the display. So the display technology is actually really similar. And if you look at the pixel density, technically the S24 Plus has the best.

pixel density. It has more pixels per inch than the Ultra, but the Ultra does have a trick up its sleeve. You see, these all have different glass on the front, and I can see it just looking in the studio right now where we have Gorilla Glass vicus 2 on the S24, on the S24 Plus, and on the back of the S24 Ultra. But on the front of the S24 Ultra, there's a new glass on there. This glass is called Gorilla Armor, and this is supposed to reduce reflections by up to 75%. And so just setting these, you can see I'll set them on. I'll show you guys what I'm seeing right here. It definitely does reduce the glare and the reflections really quite significantly. So the combination of the really nice bright display and less reflections should make the Ultra substantially more visible in bright situations and just more pleasant to look at in general. So that's kind of a hidden positive there. Looking at the design of all of these, they share a lot of similar design notes.

they're definitely boxier than previous generations. However, you'll notice the display itself. We have 6.2 in on the S24 regular, but it's rounded on the corner, so it's measuring. It's technically a little bit less than that. That we have 6.7 in on the plus, so a/ in larger, and then 6.8 in on the Ultra. But the Ultra, of course, has much more squared-off corners, which would make media viewing, in my opinion, a much more pleasant experience because you don't have little rounded corners on the inside. There now they all have flat displays, and they have similar bezels on all of them. So proportionately, uh, the bezel will look larger on the smallest model, the S24, just because it's the same size, but the overall screen is a little bit smaller. So your ratio is going to be less f aable there, but doing kind of a one and test with each of these. I don't have particularly small hands, but I think that out of all of these easily

the most one-handed one is going to be the S24. This one I can easily reach the top, I can reach the far corner, I can reach the entire phone with one hand without really straining to do so. The S24 Plus, I can still reach the top very easily, but the top left corner I really kind of have to like do a little pinky gymnastics down there to kind of reach up and get that corner. So, it's going to be more of a two-handed phone I think for most people. And then the Ultra, even though it is only .1 in larger, I think it's kind of deceptive because it really is substantially harder to use this phone with just one hand. It's almost definitely going to be a two-hand phone for most people out there, unless you're using some quick little one-hand gestures to make it more accessible. Now, all of these are available in four colors, slightly different colors, and a key difference in that is the material that they are made with. So, the S24 and the S24

plus both have aluminum frames. They kind of have what they call a unibody design, so it looks, honestly, it looks really nice. It looks very familiar as well, I might say, kind of like the iPhones, for example, which I think is a big positive. But the S24 Ultra is actually using a titanium frame on here, although the weight of the phones doesn't really change from last year. But you'll notice that, that's why they look very different on the outside. The rails on them are just much more matte on the Ultra, and still matte on the Plus and the regular, but they don't have that same textured look that we're seeing on the Ultra. For me, I actually kind of prefer the aluminum look, but titanium does have its advantages with hardness and stuff like that. But the colors, like I said, we've got four different colors for all of them. The Plus and the regular share the same four colors. The Ultra has a slightly different hue of all the four colors, so really slightly different.

there's some three online exclusive colors. I'll have these linked down below. I have an exclusive affiliate link that if you go through that, you can actually save. Uh, you can save a lot of money of an enhanced trade-in credit, and you get double the storage for free. So if you are going to pre-order or order these, please check out their link. You guys can save a lot of money doing that. All right, now before we get into the camera test, which is probably going to be the most impressive part of this video, I want to talk about what's under the hood with these in the US right now. All three of these have the Snapdragon 8 gen 3. For Galaxy, it's the same processor in all of them. It's very fast. Really not. You're not going to see any difference there, but in other regions, other parts of the world, many other parts of the world actually, uh, the S24 and the 24 plus instead we'll have the Exynos 2400 chip. Now I haven't personally used that chip.

so I can't can't really speak much to it, but I know a lot of people out there are very upset that they're not getting the Snapdragon chip. So if in that sense, the Ultra could be very compelling. They do all have the same AI features. I made a quick little intro video for each of these last week, and a lot of people were asking like, Yes, I demonstrated the AI features on the Ultra. Do they exist on the regular and the Plus? The answer is yes, they do all exist. So we're getting the same things from the call translation. So you're getting real-time translation in a phone call, which is really impressive. Of course, we do have Circle to search on all of them, even though I showed that in my demonstration with the S Pen. Let's just say we're using the S24 Plus here. So on any screen, if I tap and hold the home button, or if you are using like I am the gestures on the bottom, you just tap on the little bar, like the little grayish bar on the

bottom, you tap and hold there, and that'll bring up Circle to search. You can highlight anything, you can Circle anything, uh, so if you just highlight some text, like if I highlight, uh, this word right here, it's going to search for that. It's really, honestly, quite impressive. You can use this in any app you have open, and even though this is a lot like Google Lens, the advantage here is that you no longer have to take a screenshot and then open up Google Lens to do that. It's all Native, it's built into the UI, and I think it's a huge benefit, like I said, but I'm kind of getting off topic here. I'll talk more about the AI features in other videos, uh, some more in-depth videos on those features in particular, but focusing on the differences between these, of course, the weight is going to be a pretty substantial difference. You're looking at 8.22 oz, and I'll show that in metric for my International Friends, uh, that's a lot heavier than 6.24 oz on the plus and 5.93

on the regular, so as far as pocket ability, if you're running around with some gym shorts on, this smaller phone is going to be much more comfortable to have in your pocket. Interestingly, Samsung did omit some things from the regular even though there are a lot of similarities. One thing that they omitted was the faster charging. You're only getting 25 watts charging on there. Granted, it is a smaller battery, but you're getting 45 Watts on the plus and on the ultra. Similarly, you're getting less RAM on the regular, only 8 GB of RAM on there, and you can't upgrade. It's only 8 gigs, and then the plus and the ultra both have 12 12 gigs of RAM. As far as storage goes, once again, you're kind of limited on the regular, so 128 or 256 GB of storage, which is okay, but it's not the most out there versus the plus, which doesn't even go that low. It starts at 256 and goes to 512, and the ultra does the same thing but also goes up to

a terabyte so the storage is going to be kind of a trade-off. I think that's kind of how Samsung is starting to justify the cost difference, but I still think the regular model is still very compelling, especially when we start getting into the cameras. So I want to do a camera test for you guys, but kind of highlighting the similarities between them. All three of them have the same 12-megapixel front-facing camera, the same 12-megapixel ultrawide lens, the same 10-megapixel 3x lens, but the difference you're going to see is in the primary rear lens. That wide-angle lens is 200 megapixels on the Ultra and 50 megapixels on the Plus and the regular, but don't be fooled by how many megapixels there are. That doesn't really matter that much. The image quality itself is still going to be different, but for other reasons. You'll have different dynamic range, you'll have different low light capabilities, but I don't ever use 200-megapixel photos.

always have it been down to 12 megapixels. For example, and in addition, the ultra one of the biggest benefits to this, in my opinion, is not the primary lens. It's actually the 50 megapixels 5x lens. This is your Periscope lens, able to zoom in really well. Of course, your Mac zoom on here is 100x compared to just 30X on the other two. I'm never going to zoom in that much, but at 5x or at 10x, your photos are going to be substantially better on the ultra, as you can see right here, and videos are going to be slightly different as well. All right, so for a quick video test between the s24 ultra and the plus, overall, it's going to be pretty consistent with the colors. Uh, a lot is going to be the same. We should have slightly better dynamic range on the ultra with that larger sensor, and one thing that I noticed is that when you get closer to objects, it's a lot easier to focus in on.

the plus than it is on the ultra uh the ultra just kind of struggles to focus on objects that are really close. But when it does, it should have more of a natural bokeh, more of a blurring on the background compared to the plus. Again with that larger sensor, but for some reason, it definitely struggles. So if I go back up close, it's a lot easier to gain focus on the plus than it is on the Ultra. If we do a quick stabilization test, I'll jump around and they both. They both stabilize really similarly and really well. And now I mentioned that the battery life on these is going to be different, so let's get into a quick little battery test. We've got 5,000 mAh on the S24 Ultra, very similar to what we've been seeing the past couple of generations. We have 4,900 mAh on the plus, which is a big boost over the previous years, and we have 4,000 on the regular. So different screen sizes, different battery sizes. Let's see how they perform.

in that test, so the battery test was honestly a real mixed bag. I started off by playing a video at Max brightness, a local video file on repeat, and after 3 hours and 32 minutes, the S24 Ultra went from 100% down to 69%. The S24 Plus went from 100% down to 70%, and the S24, the regular S24, interestingly only went down to 80%. So the Plus and the Ultra were both losing battery at about the same pace. With the smaller phone, it seems the smaller display really helped in the battery life as far as playing video at Max brightness. Now the next test was exporting videos. So I had some very complex videos, really pressing this, and exporting them. And after 20 minutes of non-stop exporting, all three phones lost exactly the same amount of power. They all lost 6%. And then I left all three of these phones just sitting there, screens off, overnight. And so about 8 hours later, they all lost 4% battery.

so again, no significant difference there either. I think the only way you're really going to see a difference with these phones is going to be if you're using the screen a lot. So, this was by no means a perfect battery test, but I think it highlights that the smaller display is more conservative with battery power. And now, a couple other differences between these phones that interestingly weren't really mentioned anywhere. One of them is that you're getting Wi-Fi 7 on the S24 Ultra, whereas you're getting the previous generation Wi-Fi 6E on the 24 and the 24 plus. I think a lot of people don't have Wi-Fi 7 routers just yet, but if you're trying to be future-proof, the Ultra is going to be definitely faster there, definitely a big advantage, but not everyone, like I said, is going to care about that or use that. In addition, the S24 regular, one of the few differences here with the regular, is that it actually lacks Ultra-wideband, which I thought was really interesting.

Samsung just came out with her smart tag to and so like the plus and the ultra are going to be substantially better at finding that that Ultra wideband is going to be what you use when the tag is on the other side of the room and and you don't know where it is maybe it's under a couch cushion and you're using your phone to kind of point in the right direction and navigate over to your lost tag so I'm not sure why Samsung omitted that on the 24 and then didn't really tell anyone about that it seems like that's a pretty big differentiator at least for me as somebody who uses smart tags a lot they do all have seven years of updates though so once again longevity on these phones should be quite impressive especially because the build quality feels so solid they do all of flat displays which means you now can put on like a really solid screen protector like a nice tempered glass screen protector that's also very cheap like they're not going to cost a lot of

money, and so protecting your phone will be great. Um, I've actually been using this Paka, I think is how you pronounce it. Sorry if I said that wrong. Been using this case, uh, not sponsored. They sent it to me, uh, and it's just like any. I don't actually care. I just use any case that I can. This one has MagSafe on the back, though, so personally, I like this one to kind of protect my phone but keep it slim at the same time. Uh, but like I said, 7 years of updates is quite impressive, on par with what we see with the latest Pixel phones. They, like I said, they all have the same AI features, uh, like call translation, Circle to search, photo editing, chat enhancement, summarizing, all that stuff. Uh, but the prices are going to be obviously quite different. So I said I have links down below. It'll give you some enhanced trade-in and some other credits and some extra storage and stuff like that. But the MSRP on these, you're looking at $799 for the S24, which I think is

actually quite compelling considering it's substantially upgraded over previous generations, but the price is the same as it was, which is, I don't know, I'm happy to see that. Then we have $9.99 for the S24 plus, once again the same price as the previous generations, but a much better experience this time. In fact, Samsung changed this one the most, making it much more similar to the Ultra, and then $1299 for the Ultra, definitely not a cheap phone, but you're getting a lot that you don't see on basically any other phone out there. I think power users, without a doubt, are going to want that S Pen. I didn't even really mention that as a difference, but obviously the Ultra has that pen. I use it all the time, and the flat display is really nice with the S Pen. I think it's superior with the cameras, and like for me personally, that's the phone that I am going to be using, uh, because I mean I have all three available, so that's the one that makes the most sense for me. But between the

plus, and the regular. If I were going to recommend somebody to buy one, honestly, I think most users are not going to notice the increase in resolution, especially because out of the box it's not even there. I think most users will not notice the extra RAM. I think fast charging is great, but I typically charge overnight on a wireless stand anyway, and they both have the same wireless charging capabilities, and overnight like speed doesn't really matter anyway. Personally, I would recommend the S24. Like, I think that being able to use it one-handed and have all the same features, most of the same features at least, for a substantially lower price is really a compelling phone. I think the S24 is still a meaningful jump over the S23 FE, making it like a really solid recommendation. I think a lot of people are going to like this, but unless you want the larger display for media or multitasking, or maybe actually think you'll use the extra RAM and fast charging, then sure, go with the Plus. But that's my analysis on these three phones.

here I think the 24 regular. Like, I just really like how this phone looks. I like how it feels. It just seems like a nice step up in this lineup. So let me know which of these you like the best and why. All right, so this is not the last comparison I'm making with these phones. Leave a comment below and let me know which phones you would like me to compare these two, whether they are other phones in the Samsung lineup or maybe the OnePlus phones or the Pixel phones. Definitely leave a comment. I'm making that video very, very soon, actually several videos soon. So let me know which one you want to see. And if you enjoy the video, consider subscribing. I'm Michael Brian. Thanks for watching. I'll see you guys in the next one.

Samsung Galaxy S24 vs S24+ vs S24 Ultra (Don't Waste $500)

Samsung Galaxy S24 vs S24+ vs S24 Ultra (Don't Waste $500)