All Controversies with DxOMark. Is It Reliable?

For many, DxOMark is the reference medium that serves to catalog the quality of the camera of our mobile. Brands boast of their high marks in the middle of the bad same time that others do not even mention the company. What is the reason for this disparity in regard to the camera analysis firm?

The answer is complex, because on many occasions the brand s was seen involved in different controversies due to alleged payments from the brands to “fatten” their marks in the DxOMArk ranking.

puntuación dxomark iphone se 2020

How do the tests that have become the benchmark for mobile cameras work? Are the accusations true? Are there interests behind the web?

What is DxOMark?

DxOMark Image Labs began its commercial journey developing software for image post-processing, but it didn’t take long for its managers to have a great idea, why not create a website to analyze cameras? This is how DxOMark was born, which initially dedicated its efforts to professionals and great amateurs in the world of photography to help them know which camera was the best in general and also in certain specific sections.

In 2012 the firm published its first analysis of a mobile phone, the iPhone 4, and since then the web has become a reference medium for users, the press, manufacturers and professionals.

Who pulls the strings?

dxomark

According to the website itself, DXOMARK IMAGE LABS is a private French engineering company located near Paris and has an international staff of 120 people including qualified scientists, engineers and technicians who are experts in their respective domains.

The company has branches in Japan, Taiwan and China.

How mobile cameras analyze in DxOMark

To obtain these scores in DxOMark , a series of tests are carried out both in a highly controlled study environment and with specialized equipment, such as those carried out in all kinds of real environments, where it is possible to check the behavior of those cameras with different types of cameras. light in everyday situations.

Unlike what happens with traditional cameras, mobile phones take into account the images obtained with the sensors but also the impact of the software included by the manufacturers to improve the final result. That is why two mobiles of different brands with the same lenses can show different scores.

It is precisely these two variables that allow DxOMark to evaluate the final result, analyzing parameters such as exposure, contrast, dynamic range, color (hue, saturation, white balance), texture, noise, the operation of the focus, the possible artifacts that appear in the photo (aliasing, distortions, flashes), the behavior of the flash, the zoom (optical and manual) and, in the latest models launched on the market, even the bokeh effect or depth of field that has revolutionized photography in portrait mode between mobile users.

DxOmark Mi 10 Pro

But in addition to the photographic mode , in DxOMark they also evaluate the video recording mode, in which Flash, zoom, noise or bokeh do not come into play, but a key section for those who use that function: the behavior of video stabilization. .

What is the maximum score?

Although at first it could be thought that 100 was the note that mobile manufacturers should aspire to, we soon saw how this note was surpassed and, to this day, there are no established maximums. Obviously the higher the score a camera gets, the better it will be in its overall rating.

In its day the brand claimed that its new test protocols and scoring systems have a wide margin of maneuver for new devices. And in fact right now the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra , the mobile with the best camera on the market , exceeds 140 points.

Controversies surround the medium

The problem is that DxOMArk does not work alone independently. The medium does not only carry out analyzes of the most interesting mobile cameras that reach the market, but also carry out consulting tasks through its Image Quality Solutions division. Here they do work side by side with phone manufacturers to advise them and this is what leads many to think of favorable deals.

cámara Galaxy S10 Plus

Does DxOMark favor those companies with which it is allied ? Faced with these accusations, Nicolas Touchard, the company’s vice president of marketing, alleged the following last year:

In DxOMark the tests are always the same for everyone, regardless of whether we work with the manufacturer or not. The test team works independently and the tests are the same for all the devices they evaluate, with indistinct evaluations as to whether there has been collaboration between companies or not.

If you are smart, you will find that the manufacturers that partner with DxOMark have a clear advantage, that of having access to their hardware and software and “tuning” their phone, or at least the software, to the analysis of the company to “inflate” your note. This means that the final version of the mobile that we receive in our hands sometimes does not have all the “benefits” that the phone did have when passing through the test bench.

On the other hand, manufacturers who do not partner with the medium are at an automatic disadvantage in terms of scoring, even if the image quality outside the laboratory is not as much as the obtained figure dictates.

So … do I trust DxOMark or not?

The problem is in the numbers . The final score is not an average since, as you have already seen, many parameters are analyzed independently. If you look at these scores individually at the end of each of the analyzes, you can see how the final score is not the average of the scores for each section. Actually, in DxOMark, a different coefficient is applied to each parameter to give them more or less importance for the final grade.

dxomark

This is why DxOMark scores often do not match reality and seeing that two smartphones share a similar figure when they give very different results can be misleading for many.

What we must do when consulting a certain analysis in DxOMark , is to forget about the figures and take a look at the written reviews where the strengths and weaknesses of each phone are highlighted. These texts are much more informative as they actually delve into the important details that make a phone camera good or bad.