This Week at Mark Ellis Reviews

👉 I upset the Apple cart (sorry) with my iPhone 16 Pro Max vs S25 Ultra opinions, revealed my favourite iPad Mini 7 accessories and checked out some excellent value-for-money earbuds.

TOP STORY

Samsung S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Pro Max: BLIND CAMERA TEST!

Yes, this video is the reason why I’ve been battling Apple fans this week (I am one myself if you haven’t noticed yet!). I won’t give away my full opinions but it boils down to this:

• I think the S25 Ultra takes better photos overall than the iPhone 16 Pro Mac

• Samsung’s One UI 7 is the closest it’s ever been to iOS

• Galaxy AI is streets ahead of Apple Intelligence

At the end of the day, these two phones are very similar. If you bought either one today, you’d be satisfied. I personally prefer certain aspects of the S25 Ultra but someone else may not and that’s ok! Either way, I’m ready for someone to do something truly innovative again with their flagship devices that isn’t purely AI-driven. I’m looking at you iPhone SE 4!

If you can’t watch the video right now, read about my verdict here.

My Favourite iPad Mini 7 Accessories!

The iPad mini 7 is my favourite ever iPad, and potentially one of my favourite Apple devices altogether. But if you’ve ever used any type of iPad before, you’ll know that they are made infinitely better by just a few accessories. You can watch the video for more but here are three of my top picks:

• Moft Float Folio case

• MX Master 3s Mouse

• NuPhy Air60 V2 keyboard and case

JLab Go Pop ANC review: noise cancelling cements best-value credentials

There are a load of ‘budget’ earbuds out there. Some of them are garbage, but some of them are (and increasingly so) very, very good. Max checked out the new JLab Go Pop ANC earbuds this week, and his conclusions suggest that they certainly fall into that second category, with no small thanks paid to their mind-blowingly low price of $29/£39.

Here are his key takeaways:

• Noise cancelling that defies the price tag

• Solid, if not awe-inspiring audio quality

• Staggeringly long battery life

Find me a pair of earbuds that are this cheap and packed with comparable features and levels of quality!

Essential Tech News

OPINION

Surprise results from my S25 Ultra vs iPhone 16 Pro Max camera comparison

If you want to see the best and worst of people within the comments section of a tech YouTube video, publish a comparison between Samsung and Apple’s flagship smartphones. It never fails.

If you haven’t seen it yet, my comparison between the S25 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max focuses mainly on a ‘blind’ camera comparison where I place several different styles of photo side-by-side, one labelled ‘Phone A’, the other ‘Phone B’. At the end of the video, I reveal the phone behind each label. I won’t give anything away here, but I think the results are fascinating and, in several instances, buck the trend with what has come before in the battle between these two monoliths of the smartphone industry. Go in with an open mind, and your own opinion may be changed. I know mine was.

Despite this, such videos reveal that there is still a fairly large proportion of the world’s population who cannot accept someone else’s opinion. My preference for one photo over another has resulted in people telling me that I need to ‘do better’, and, in one case, a suggestion that we’d somehow made an error in the labelling of the photos in the video (we hadn’t). There were the usual cries of “this guy is SO biased” and “paid review”, too, of course.

I’ve got thick enough skin these days not to care about this kind of stuff, but it still fascinates me how tribal and blindly, viciously loyal some people can be towards a mobile telephone brand. I genuinely think that the contents of comment threads like the one in last week’s video could be studied by people far cleverer than me to gain a better understanding of just how weird human beings are.

So, if you haven’t watched the video yet, go take a look, please - but make sure you hang around for the comments section.

TOP FINDS

What I Watched On YouTube This Week

I didn’t watch a huge amount of YouTube this week, but I’m happy to report this is the first time I’m not featuring any car-related content below!

🍎 I visited Apple Park in Cupertino - Campus & Visitor Center Tour (ThisIsE) - I got a chance to spend some time with Iskren in Berlin last year during the IFA tech conference, and he is a lovely dude. He’s also a brilliant tech YouTuber, as this documentary reveals. And it’s a proper documentary.

🎵 Architects: "Blackhole" Reaction & Meanderings (Justin Hawkins Rides Again) - I can’t believe this is the first time I’ve mentioned Justin in this section of the newsletter. If you have even a passing interest in music and hearing an expert opinion on what makes songs great (or terrible), he’s eminently watchable. And, yes, he’s the bloke from The Darkness.

🤔 Get A "Real" Job… (Peter Lindgren) - Peter has been a big inspiration for me over the years. His content recently has, if I’m being honest, been rather unpredictable, but I find his struggle with how to remain consistent in one of the toughest niches on YouTube fascinating.

‘GRAM OF THE WEEK

I’ve got a BYD Seal for a week!

I had the pleasure of checking out BYD’s latest EV this week which has been incredibly interesting if only as a comparison to the Tesla Model Y which I saw last week.

The BYD Seal will be appearing in a video next week so be sure to check it out if that’s your jam!

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter, it’s great to see it growing with new subscribers and I hope you’re enjoying the content! To make sure we are tailoring our output to your interests, I’d be very grateful if you could complete this very short survey. This is your chance to tell us what you want to see more of!

Until next week!

~ Mark