Watch how the LG V30’s video quality compares to a $50,000 RED camera

LG’s V-series phones have always been about video – hence the V in the name. If you’ve been keeping up, then you know LG’s V30 takes things to another level by adding videographer-friendly features like a LOG profile for color grading, a 10-bit sensor, and pan-and-zoom feature. But how does it actually look compared to a more professional video rig?

YouTuber Parker Welback put that to the test with a comparison between the LGV30 and a $50,000 RED Weapon. He taped the V30 to the Weapon and replicated a scene from “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” It’s important to note Walbeck says the video is sponsored by LG, but he’s done a similar comparison before with the iPhone 7.

Having used the V30 extensively myself, I think it’s a good showcase for some of the V30’s unique strengths. Of course, the V30 can’t come close to the pure quality of a $50,000 camera, and some might even argue its basic 4K video quality isn’t as good as phones with larger sensors. But it does give you many more tools to work with, with the flat color profile being a particular boon for maintaining highlights in high contrast scenes. The color grading on both cameras is a little on the stronger side, but the V30 handles it well, to the extent I’d say the untrained eye would hardly be able to tell a difference.

Then again, a trained eye could. There is some highlight clipping in the sky, the V30 seems a little oversharpened, it suffers from some rolling shutter, and the OIS can’t mitigate all the wobble when the camera is mounted on a handheld stabilizer. The shutter speed on the V30 is too high, giving it a bit of choppy look, and that’s something you can’t fully mitigate without an ND filter as you can’t adjust the aperture on the V30. In any case, the strong YouTube compression and the intense color grading also makes it difficult to really compare the quality in any measurable way.

But again, it’s a smartphone against a $50,000, Hollywood-grade camera. As always, it’s the person behind the camera that matters most. The V30 just happens to give that person more tools to work with than the average smartphone.

Let’s see what RED has up its sleeve whenever its own smartphone hits the market.