Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.
Video on the iPhone 5S isn't anything overly special, beyond offering decent footage without having to try very hard. As for stills shooting there's no optical image stabilisation on board, which means that anything that comes with a shaky hand will have the same judder in the footage.
This is especially apparent when zooming in on the footage when you're filming, which can now be done at the same time.
However, the general clarity and smoothness of the video is impressive and will help you capture the precious moments in high clarity. The only other real option is to turn the LED light on to get some real illumination, but be warned: it's bright.
Slo-mo
Another trick enabled by the A7 chip, slow motion has been added to the iPhone 5S. It enables 120fps capture at 720p resolution, but more importantly you can choose when in the footage to speed up and slow down the action, so if you've got a squirrel falling from the tree you can make it so that only the really hilarious bit is at the slower speed.
It's a really neat system for editing your footage, with little tabs to trim the movie to get rid of any waiting around at the start or the end. The slo-mo capabilities have been upped to 240 frames per second at higher resolutions in the later models.
While the effect is cool, it's not something I'm particularly bothered about in terms of a killer feature on a smartphone. The results are fun and pleasing, but they don't really make me want to pull out Slo-Mo mode all the time.
On top of that it's very hard to share the slow motion video, as you can't just pull it off the phone, with the resulting .MOV file jumping and skipping somewhat when viewed back on a PC.
So while I like the idea, Slo-Mo left me feeling rather cold.
