I was in Northern MN a couple years back when there was some decent aurora https://imgur.com/a/nBjdhZ9

What the camera caught was really impressive! Even with just a couple seconds exposure on a phone. But what the human eye saw was.... effectively a portion of the sky that was unusually bright and seemed to have some sort of movement. Like you stared at it and knew something was amiss, but nothing "impressive" to look at.