Jul 26, 2021 2:26 PM

TCL Series Camera Comparison

Featured in this article

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
01
TCL 20 Pro 5G, Night mode. This $500 camera does a respectable job capturing photos at night or in low light. The image is sharp, it's decently detailed, and it's not very grainy. But look at the following photo and you'll see the Pixel 4A 5G ($500) fares better. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
02
Google Pixel 4A 5G, Night mode. The Pixel image is brighter overall, captures so much more detail, and retains some color too. It's just so much nicer than the TCL photo.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
03
TCL 20 Pro 5G, main camera. The main 48-megapixel camera does a pretty great job during the day. There's a nice natural blur effect here separating the corndogs from the background, and they're pretty sharp\! 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
04
TCL 20 Pro 5G, Night mode. Considering the limited amount of light here, this is a pretty good photo. Parts of the background are a little too dim, but the parts that are more important are detailed and colorful. Sure, it's a bit oversaturated, but sometimes that works.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
05
TCL 20 Pro 5G, main camera. This phone loves to strip out shadows, and that can be a problem in images like this. There's too little contrast, so everything looks a bit flat. You can tweak this when editing the photo, but it just shouldn't be squashing shadows this much.
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
06
TCL 20 Pro 5G, ultrawide camera. The ultrawide is best used when you have lots of light around you. The detail here is OK, as are the colors. But if I took this at night, the quality would be quite poor.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
07
TCL 20S, main camera. The TCL 20S ($250) can hold its own during the day with competitors like the Samsung Galaxy A32 5G (see the next photo). But you can see it oversaturates colors like the green on the trees, and shadows are banished from existence. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
08
Samsung Galaxy A32 5G, main camera. This $280 Samsung phone isn't *as* sharp as the TCL, but it looks a whole lot more natural. The trees aren't too green, for example. Samsung usually squashes shadows too, but nowhere near as much as the TCL.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
09
TCL 20S, main camera. The colors are not very accurate here, and nothing is quite sharp, but it did a decent job of keeping the exposure relatively balanced. 
Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
10
TCL 20 SE, main camera. As you can see, with this $190 phone, you can snap some decent daytime shots (even on cloudy days). But I was standing very still. You'll regularly end up with blurry shots.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu
11
TCL 20 SE, main camera. This phone does not have a dedicated night mode, which captures multiple images and stitches them together for a brighter image. Without it, don't expect much in low light. Nothing here is in focus or sharp; it's just a giant blurry mess.