Do you care about DxOMark rankings? (Poll of the Week)

Last week’s poll summary: Last week, we asked you about your favorite podcast app. Out of roughly 20,000 total votes, the results were mixed. The clear winners were Google Podcasts and Pocket Casts, with Google Play Music coming in third. Many of you also said you don’t listen to podcasts at all.

When it’s time to buy a new smartphone, the first thing many people look at is the camera. Is it good? How does it compare to the competition? Do you have to pay a ton of money to get all the extra camera features, or are you better off with something cheaper that still provides a good experience?

One metric that companies like to throw out during major smartphone announcements is the DxOMark score. When a camera testing website gives a phone a near-perfect rating, companies are obviously going to shout it from the rooftops.

But there are a few problems with taking DxOMark’s headline score as truth, as we’ve previously detailed. Our own Rob Triggs points out that the final rankings weigh both photo- and video-taking capabilities, so a phone with a better picture-taking camera might drop a few points overall if its video capabilities aren’t comparable. What’s also curious is that any manufacturer can pay to use the DxO Analyzer solution to test and tweak its own cameras prior to launch, which could potentially result in a higher score when DxOMark tests the final product. There’s nothing wrong about manufacturers paying for a service that could help improve its cameras, but the problem lies with the final score. One has to wonder how much a smartphone company tweaked its cameras to appear favorable in DxOMark’s final test.

Regardless about how you feel towards DxOMark, one thing’s for certain: These scores have become controversial in the tech review sphere, and smartphone companies are going to keep working hard to get their phones to appear at the top of that list.

In case you missed it, DxOMark just published its review of the Galaxy Note 9‘s camera, giving it an overall score of 103. This puts it right up there with the HTC U12 Plus and six points behind the HUAWEI P20 Pro. While the Note 9 scored a solid 107 in photography, it only achieved a score of 94 in video.

Do you take these scores into account before making your next smartphone purchase? Cast your vote in the poll below, and let us know if you have anything to add in the comments.