A=rand(3,5)
b=rand(3,1)
The backslash returns a solution with most 0s and lsqr returns solution with minimum l2-norm.
xbackslash=A\b
xlsqr=lsqr(A,b)
xminnorm=lsqminnorm(A,b)
A*xbackslash
A*xlsqr
norm(xbackslash)
norm(xlsqr) % smaller even xlsqr has no O
On the runtime the backslash is usualy faster, at least for dense matrix.