The Huawei P20 & P20 Pro Review: Great Battery Life & Even Better Night Vision

Camera Video Recording

Video recording hasn’t been a forte of Huawei devices for several years now, so having a look at the quality of the resulting videos of the P20 Pro and P20 is of particular interest.

The two new Huawei devices also for the first time introduce the option to record video in HEVC/H265 format alongside the “compatibility option” of standard AVC/H264.

The P20s have the same limitations as past devices where higher framerate and higher resolution recording above 1080p30 aren’t able to use features such as EIS (electronic stabilisation). For the P20’s, this is of particular concern as the camera don’t have any OIS.

P20

P20 Pro

As expected, the resulting video is very disappointing. In 1080p30 mode, the phone is very much still seemingly using a 1080p stream from the camera sensor and then using a cut-out from that frame with margins for the EIS mechanism that is then resized back up to 1080p. The resulting picture quality is one of less than 1080p with reduced field-of-view.

When disabling the stabiliser or when going over 1080p60 in framerate or resolution, the video becomes the usual shaky mess that isn’t that useable. I was particularly disappointed in the quality of the 60fps footage as it has a very notable loss in quality and detail compared to the 1080p30 footage. Focusing response is also outright terrible- while focusing in on a near object seems to be quite fast, both phones had major trouble focusing out again in a responsive manner.

Overall, in terms of video recording the P20’s aren’t competitive at all for a 2018 flagship device and Huawei still hasn’t managed to provide good quality video recording to date.

I was curious to see how the P20 Pro handled video recording when transitioning between the main camera and the 3x optical zoom camera and unfortunately the result isn’t that great compared to other dual camera implementations – there’s a notable delay between zooming in and the actual camera switch. Sometimes you’ll also catch the telephoto lens still focusing onto the subject after it already made the switch. On the plus side, switching over to the telephoto lens also means that the video is OIS stabilised and again this is a great improvement to the quality.