Huawei Mate 50 Pro, the new DxOMark champion. Outperforms Pixel 7 Pro

Apparently the lack of partnership with Leica for the development of the new Huawei Mate 50 Pro didn’t affect the phone’s camera performance. DxOMark has published its review for Huawei’s new flagship camera and decided that it is the best performing smartphone camera on the market. It scored an aggregate 149 points in DxO’s tests, earning the highest scores in several categories.

Mate 50 Pro takes first place in DxOMark rankings without Leica partnership

In the absence of Leica, Huawei has developed a proprietary photography system that covers both the optics and processing algorithms, as well as the colors the cameras capture, called Xmage. It basically continues what Huawei had started with Leica since the Huawei P9, and improves camera performance in all shooting situations and on each individual sensor, according to DxOMark tests.

On the plus side, DxO mentions that the Mate 50 Pro has one of the few cameras you can rely on in most common situations, but especially in low light, where it delivers excellent performance. It’s the variable aperture system here that helps with both quality group portraits and low-light images with lots of detail, opening up the lens completely. What’s more, the ultra-wide camera offers above average performance in the market, and the zoom is also a quality one. And even in the video department, DxOMark notes that the Huawei Mate 50 Pro delivers good performance in both daylight and indoors with artificial light.

New Mate 50 Pro comes out on top in several tests, but not all

The only issues mentioned are lag when shooting in complicated conditions and the fact that what you see in the preview before you take the photo isn’t exactly representative of the final result, which appears after AI processing.

Huawei thus gets the highest score so far for the photo component, 152, but also the highest score for photos with natural blur at the back, 80. In other areas it comes close to the highest scores so far, but doesn’t quite reach them. For example, it scores just 148 for zoom, compared to 151 for the Galaxy S22 Ultra, while it scores 141 for video, compared to 149 for the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Even so, the Huawei Mate 50 Pro is now the top-ranked phone in the DxOMark rankings, above the old “champion”, which only spent a few days in the top spot, the Google Pixel 7 Pro and the Honor Magic4 Ultimate, released in the spring. The iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models are barely in 4th and 5th place.

Top 10 smartphone cameras in November 2022 (DxOMark)

1. Huawei Mate 50 Pro – 149
2. Google Pixel 7 Pro – 147
3. Honor Magic4 Ultimate – 147
4. Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max – 146
5. Apple iPhone 14 Pro – 146
6. Huawei Mate 50 Pro – 143
7. Apple iPhone 13 Pro – 141
8. Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max – 141
9. Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra – 141
10. Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ – 139