Huawei Mate 50 Pro Camera test

We put the Huawei Mate 50 Pro through our rigorous SBMARK Camera test suite to measure its performance in photo, video, and zoom quality from an end-user perspective. This article breaks down how the device fared in a variety of tests and several common use cases and is intended to highlight the most important results of our testing with an extract of the captured data.

Overview

Key camera specifications:

• Primary: 50MP sensor, 24mm equivalent lens with f/1.4 – f/4.0 adjustable aperture, OIS
• Ultra-wide: 13MP sensor, 13mm equivalent f/2.2-aperture lens
• Tele: 64MP, 90mm equivalent f/3.5-aperture lens, OIS

With a SBMARK Camera score of 149, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro is the new No. 1  in our smartphone camera ranking. It also achieved the best Photo score to date, thanks to excellent results in the exposure, focus, and texture/noise categories.

The autofocus score benefited a lot from the new and innovative adjustable aperture, which allows for the optimization of the depth of field in a scene. An adjustable aperture is especially useful, for example, in group portraits. As smartphone image sensors have become bigger, the effect has been a reduced depth of field, which makes it more difficult to keep all subjects in focus if they are not in the same focus plane. The Huawei system uses an embedded diaphragm that allows for adjustment from f/1.4 to f/4.0, so, depending on the scene, the camera can either prioritize light capture (in low light), maximize depth of field, or pick a more balanced setting between the two extremes. We last saw a similar feature on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 series with its duo aperture, but it’s still quite uncommon, and the Samsung feature does not lead to the same results.

Zoom quality is a strong point of the device, thanks to a combination of three camera modules with super-resolution and fusion algorithms. The result is good detail preservation from ultra-wide to long-range tele. Overall, the Mate 50 Pro ranks second for Zoom, just behind the Honor Magic4 Ultimate, which offers slightly better detail at medium-range tele.

For video, the Mate 50 Pro was tested at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second, with Vivid HDR mode enabled. Vivid HDR is a new HDR video format and already supported by phones and some TVs (http://www.theuwa.com/terminal-certify). Overall, the Mate 50 Pro was not quite as outstanding for video as it was for still images and only ranks 7th, lower than its direct rivals Google Pixel 7 Pro and the latest Apple iPhones. Exposure was the main strength in video, with accurate target exposure and a wide dynamic range in bright light and indoors. However, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro somewhat lagged behind the best in class in terms of texture/noise compromise, especially in low light.

Things look different for our new Friends & Family use case score. Here, the Mate 50 Pro scored one point higher than the Google Pixel 7 Pro and two points higher than the Apple iPhone 14 Pro. As mentioned above, the new adjustable aperture gave the Huawei phone a real advantage over the competition for group shots. Skin tones were mostly well rendered, but pink or orange shifts could become visible under specific conditions. Our testers also found the Mate 50 Pro to be a little less capable of capturing the decisive moment than some of its rivals. Especially in low light, the Pixel 7 Pro was faster at capturing an image and better at avoiding motion blur.

It’s worth mentioning that the Mate 50 Pro does not come with the Leica imaging system found on the P50 Pro. Instead, it is equipped with Huawei’s own XMAGE system, which lets the user choose from three image-rendering presets: Vivid, Bright, and Original. Vivid increases contrast, Bright increases brightness while balancing the exposure, and Original attempts to render colors the same way as they are seen by the user’s eyes. All our testing was done in Original mode.

When tested under dim conditions, the Mate 50 Pro provided sharp and quite natural detail, as well as a very wide dynamic range, which overall resulted in the best low-light score we have seen to date. Image rendering was very well balanced, with nice and vivid colors as well as pleasant contrast. It appears that the Huawei engineers tried to render the mood of low-light scenes by allowing a slightly warm color cast. In low light, the camera kept the aperture wide open at f/1.4 in order to capture as much light as possible.

When using the tele zoom in low light, the Mate 50 Pro also managed to preserve more details and kept noise levels lower than its rivals at most zoom settings.

Low-light video quality on the other hand was lower than on the direct competitors, especially when compared to the iPhone 14 Pro. Texture artifacts and quite strong noise were the most noticeable drawbacks when recording video in dim conditions.

Test summary

About SBMARK Camera tests: SBMARK’s Camera evaluations take place in laboratories and in real-world situations using a wide variety of subjects. The scores rely on objective tests for which the results are calculated directly by measurement software on our laboratory setups, and on perceptual tests in which a sophisticated set of metrics allow a panel of image experts to compare aspects of image quality that require human judgment. Testing a smartphone involves a team of engineers and technicians for about a week. Photo, Zoom, and Video quality are scored separately and then combined into an Overall score for comparison among the cameras in different devices. For more information about the SBMARK Camera protocol, click here. More details on smartphone camera scores are available here. The following section gathers key elements of SBMARK’s exhaustive tests and analyses. Full performance evaluations are available upon request. Please contact us  on how to receive a full report.

In photo, the Mate 50 Pro received the best overall score to date, thanks to excellent results in exposure, autofocus, and texture/noise. It generally provided very pleasant rendering, even in difficult conditions such as low light or high dynamic range scenes.

Close-Up

Close-up is the third new use case score introduced with SBMARK Camera version 5. It evaluates the camera’s ability to capture detail at subject distances below 10cm and magnifications as close as possible to 1:1.

In its macro mode, the Mate 50 Pro used the ultra-wide camera, with convincing results. Close-up shots tended to come with accurate exposure and nice color. Fine detail was rendered much better than on the Xiaomi 12S Ultra but lagged slightly behind the iPhone 14 Pro. Note that these samples were captured at the minimum focus distance for each device. As seen below, the Mate 50 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro allow you to get much closer than the Xiaomi.

The Mate 50 Pro follows in the footsteps of previous Huawei devices and delivered class-leading exposure. Target exposure tended to be spot on, and a wide dynamic range ensured good detail in both the highlight and shadow areas of the frame. Compared to some of its main competitors, the Mate 50 Pro was also capable of creating nice contrast, but in strongly backlit scenes, this could come at the expense of a halo effect around the subject.

The Mate 50 Pro achieved the high score in our database for exposure, better than the  Honor Magic4 Ultimate by one point. This was thanks to natural and pleasant contrast, as well as accurate target exposure and wide dynamic range in low light.

The Mate 50 Pro delivered nice colors and accurate white balance, especially when capturing scenes with a low dynamic range.

However, green casts under indoor conditions and blue casts in bright outdoor light meant it could not quite match the color performance of the Apple iPhone 14 Pro and the Google Pixel 7 Pro. Our testers also found the skin tone rendering to be slightly off in some instances, with too much saturation on fair skin tones.

The adjustable aperture is arguably the Mate 50 Pro’s most important innovation. It allows the photographer to choose between a very wide depth of field at f/4 or maximized light-capturing capability at f/1.4. In default photo mode, the camera never appeared to use apertures smaller than f/2.8. In this sample, the camera used f/2.8, which is enough to keep all subjects in focus, unlike the iPhone 14 Pro and Magic4 Ultimate.

In order to use f/4, Pro Mode needs to be activated, which allows the user to choose manually from 10 aperture settings. This offers much greater flexibility in terms of depth of field than any other smartphone camera available today.

In our tests, the Mate 50 Pro switched from f/2.0 to f/2.8 when it detected more than one person in the scene, in order to extend the depth of field. This can be seen in the series of images below. This way, for a single portrait shot, the limited depth of field of the f/2 aperture was used to create a mild bokeh effect and to isolate the subject from the background. With more people in the scene, the priority switched to keeping all subjects in focus, and the camera used f/2.8. In low light, this strategy changed, and the camera would generally stick to f/1.4 to allow for maximum light capture.

The Mate 50 Pro autofocus system delivered accurate focus and was very consistent in doing so. On the downside, it would on occasions be a little slow, which meant missing the exact moment intended for capture, especially in high-contrast situations. In this scene, the shutter was triggered right at the moment the person kicked the ball. The Mate 50 Pro image was captured a fraction of a second too late. The Pixel 7 Pro did a better job at capturing the right moment.

In scenes with a low dynamic range, the Mate 50 Pro managed to capture images faster providing a real zero-shutter lag, unlike some other flagship phones, such as the Xiaomi 12S Ultra or Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra.

The level of detail in the Mate 50 Pro images was in line with the flagship competitors in its class.

Detail was preserved well down to low light. In this sample, detail was on a similar level as the Honor Magic4 Ultimate, and better than on the iPhone, which showed some quite unnatural detail with ringing effects.

In this graph, we see visual noise measurements from our lab in different light levels for the Mate 50 Pro and two competitors. On the Mate 50 Pro, noise was generally well under control at all light levels.

Huawei’s noise reduction strategy remains unchanged from previous models. There was pretty much no fine luminance noise noticeable in any conditions. This was quite different to the Pixel 7 Pro, and especially the iPhone 14 Pro, which both allowed some fine noise in their images. Overall noise is very well under control on the Huawei Mate 50 Pro. Only some chroma noise “blobs” could be noticeable, resulting in pinkish image areas, especially in low light.

The most common image artifacts were generally well handled by the Mate 50 Pro. However, halos and color quantification around highlight in low-light scenes were quite intrusive.

The Mate 50 Pro was the best device for bokeh that we have tested to date. A high-resolution depth map allowed for precise isolation of the subject from the background. Foreground blur looked realistic, too, and in combination with the nice spotlight rendering, it made the Mate 50 Pro bokeh images hard to distinguish from an image taken with a DSLR and large aperture lens.

When looking at the image in detail, some slight depth estimation artifacts became visible, but the Huawei was better than most rivals in this respect. It was also obvious that at default settings, the Huawei applied much stronger blur than the iPhone.

In terms of image preview on the display, the Mate 50 Pro showed improvement over the P50 Pro, but it still could not match the iPhone 14 Pro, which managed a very similar image between preview and capture, especially in terms of exposure.

The Mate 50 Pro offered very high image quality across almost the entire zoom range. Target exposure was usually accurate, with a wide dynamic range However, slight instabilities could be noticeable across a series of consecutive shots. In the Zoom category, the Mate 50 Pro placed second, behind the Honor Magic4 Ultimate.

The Mate 50 Pro comes with a 13mm equivalent ultra-wide camera, which offers a wide field of view as well as very good image results with generally pleasant rendering. The device manages generally to provide high texture/noise tradeoff with regards to the competitors, with free-of-noise rendering even down to low light. Optical distortion is very well compensated for.

At close range tele (40mm to 70mm), the Mate 50 Pro offered impressively natural rendering at the center of the frame, with good fine detail as well as a wide dynamic range and nice colors. However, there might be a loss of sharpness around the edges of the image, due to fusion algorithms.

At medium range tele, focus issues became noticeable, and the level of detail was generally very slightly lower than on the Honor Magic4 Ultimate. However, the very low noise level continued to impress, no matter the tele zoom setting.

Mate 50 Pro video was tested at 4K resolution and 30 frames per second. This was the first SBMARK Camera test for which Vivid HDR mode had been activated. HDR formats have become more commonplace for both recording and display over the past few years. Apple has been using the Dolby Vision format since the iPhone 12 series. Some other manufacturers, for example, Samsung, support the HDR10+ format.

Please note that YouTube only displays the original HDR rendering if videos are watched on a compatible HDR screen. Otherwise, a compressed SDR video is displayed.

The Mate 50 Pro did very well for video exposure, with accurate face exposure, fast and accurate exposure adaptation, and a wide dynamic range as visible below. The video frames below from the iPhone 14 Pro and Mate 50 Pro were created by converting the devices’ 10-bit video frames into 8-bit frames, using a standardized tone-mapping curve, which to some extent is representative of the perceived rendering of an HDR monitor. Note that the overall exposure of these images appears darker than when viewed on an HDR monitor, and that face exposure is acceptable in both images. The iPhone 14 Pro generally has a slightly wider dynamic range, allowing for better highlight recovery in the scene below.

Colors were nice and well-balanced in all indoor and bright light conditions. White balance was generally spot on as well. In low light, some white balance casts were visible. In this clip, a green cast was quite noticeable.

Video autofocus was one of the Mate 50 Pro’s major plus points. The system managed to always keep the main subject in focus, and focus transitions were smooth in most cases. This said, our testers observed slightly too abrupt transitions on some occasions as here. But globally, the results were very convincing.

Mate 50 Pro video clips generally showed a high level of detail under most conditions. However, some texture artifacts could be quite intrusive, especially under low light. This had a significant impact on the video texture score.

Video noise levels were higher on the Mate 50 Pro than on its direct competitors across pretty much all light conditions.

Inconsistent sharpness when moving the device while recording video was arguably one of the Mate 50 Pro’s most important drawbacks. The effect was most noticeable when walking while recording. Fairly long exposure times meant that motion blur occurred with every step of the videographer. The images recorded in such a way were stable, but vibrations from the steps were noticeable in the footage.

Overall, the Mate 50 Pro controlled the most common video artifacts quite well, but some artifacts, including aliasing and ghosting, were still noticeable. Points were also deducted for the 30fps frame rate. Compared to other devices that offer 60fps, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro’s videos were less smooth. This was particularly noticeable when panning.