Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Review: It Better Be Good! By Marques Brownlee

What's up moved here, so I was talking to a friend recently, and he asked me what phone I was using, and it was the Galaxy Note 20 ultra sitting right in front of me, and so I said, oh nice cool. So how do you like it- and this is the moment where I have to try to distill all of my thoughts and my testing and my experience into like one sentence- that's easily digestible to a know a regular everyday person, that's not in the tech world and what came out of my mouth was yeah. It is it's really nice, but it's also 1 300, so it better be, and so, when I step back to really think about it and to put together all my thoughts for this full review for you guys that thought really just kept coming back to me over and over because at this price you really only see like the crazy first gen experimental, folding phones or flagships, the bleeding edge absolute best that a company has to offer, and this is a 1300 flagship. So it's got to be top of the line at basically everything to even consider it worth buying and the note 20 ultra for me kind of lives up to that. First, this is the best looking best built phone Samsung has ever made. In my opinion, the matte sort of soft touch finish on the back, the boxy flat top and bottom, the razor-thin bezels, the chamfers at all the metal rails and edges.

Even this color, this mystic bronze, is not normally a look. I go for it's kinda pink from some angles, but also kinda rose gold from some other angles, but actually kind of like it, and I like the contrast with the dark camera bump. So all the way around. Like I said from the first time, I picked up this metal and glass phone in my first impressions, video it screams quality and with Samsung's flagships, there's always also a bunch of the little things that also add up to make that premium feeling experience things that we would be nitpicking and complaining about if they weren't here for this price, but they are here, so the vibration motor is really high quality. The same ultrasonic in display fingerprint reader is back here, and it's pretty fast.

There's wireless charging. That's here, reverse wireless charging is here: there's ip68 water resistance, all the stuff we kind of take for granted to be in a Samsung flagship, but it is all here again just no headphone jack, and then I think the two main things that make this an ultra note are the display and the s pen. So the display at the risk of sounding like display mate, is a plus, but it is an awesome screen. It's a 6.9 inch, quad HD super AMOLED display. It's got: HDR certification, the 120 hertz refresh rate the tiny hole punch in the top of the middle outstanding maximum and minimum brightness.

Furthermore, it's crispy. Furthermore, it's great. I mean it's just a great screen, but there are believed it or not both pros and cons to this ultra screen, the main con being. It is absolutely massive and it has curved edges. And yes, I did experience accidental touches occasionally, and I think that happened more often thanks to the hand gymnastics that are required to handle such a big screen like this I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm on the side of preferring we go back to flat displays, but this one is not flat, but also, of course, having a huge display that goes right up to the edges and a tiny hole punch cutout I mean that makes a pretty solid media experience, although I will say maybe my only hardware disappointment in this phone is the speaker system, not that it's problematic.

It's not bad at all. It's just easy to block that bottom speaker, and it is a stereo pair with the earpiece. But overall, despite its Dolby ammo support, I was unimpressed with the actual quality or fullness of the sound from the speakers. The specs behind the display are all high-end, as you'd expect, if you didn't already know, snapdragon, 865 plus, and this unit has 12 gigs of ram now you know, and that combined with the 120 hertz display, is really everything I want in a smartphone nowadays. You've heard me talk about high refresh rate.

It makes its way to yet another flagship here. In the note- and yes, I still love it, there were no problems with performance and smoothness from my usage was great. Also, behind the notes display is the same ultrasonic fingerprint reader. We saw in the s20 ultra, and it's ultra impressive and ultra similar to last year's performance, nothing ultra special here, and then you got yourself a 4 500 William hour battery. Now, I'm old enough to remember when Samsung Galaxy note was like the big battery phone, it was a battery champ.

It was the phone that us nerds would take to CES because it was just the battery you couldn't kill in one day. It's not that anymore. You know shocker, you can kill this 4 500 William hour battery with a giant 120 hertz display using it all the time you can kill it, even if it's not a quad HD, but with typical use note, 20 ultras battery is good, like it's six hours of screen on time, ending a day with 15 to 25 battery left regularly good, and I have no problems with that, especially when this phone also supports 45 watt fast charging and there's wireless charging. So it's good. If you really want the extra next level battery champ.

There are other phones, including the brother of this phone s20 ultra, which is kind of just like the same form. Factor minus the s pen. That's a 5 000 William hour battery, so that's better, but this is good. Okay! Let's talk about the camera, I have a lot to say about this camera system, as you can probably imagine, but I'll try to keep it concise here. First, this camera bump is huge.

It's huge and there are other phones with big camera bumps big camera systems, but something about this one just being a straight-up shelf like it's not tiered, like the s20, ultra or rounded, or you know, a double shelf like some others, they don't try to hide it. It's just a big block on the back of this phone that sticks out so much that it actually has a tendency to gather dust in the surrounding corners. But I honestly don't hate it. It's like they're owning it. It's a character, piece that you know maybe has time to grow on you.

The rings around. The three cameras to me, I think, is a good look, and you do get a great array of cameras. It's the 108 megapixel standard camera that sort of rattles a bit when you shake it, because it's so big and then there's a 12 megapixel ultra-wide and a 12 megapixel periscope zoom camera. If you really do hate the camera bump and the fact that it sticks out so much and wobbles like crazy, when it's on a desk, you can always grab a grip case from channel sponsor brand. It's actually literally the perfect size to get rid of the camera bump, and then you got your added protection, so I'll drop a link below if you're interested in that, if not, you can live dangerously like me and walk around with a glass phone and no protection.

So how are the cameras? They are great. First, the addition of the laser autofocus really fixed the hunting problems. The galaxy s20 ultra was having, with this same huge camera module. Now it's not the same tracking autofocus as a pixel, but the hunting is gone. Close-Up subjects are no longer problematic, but what it didn't fix is the shutter lag, so there's still a pretty noticeable delay between tapping to take a photo and when the actual capture happens, which is kind of a bummer.

If you're trying to capture fast motion or any action type stuff or just like trying to time a photo of a fire truck outside a hotel at 3am to not be flaring into the lens, but I will say that, with the caveat that you got to be a little more patient and hold the camera still and wait for the shutter lag, this camera turns out outstanding photos in all kinds of conditions in daylight in harsh shooting into the sun shooting at night shooting indoors and outdoors this thing crushes. I think you could make an argument that it's just above the pixel for versatility, thanks to having a perfect ultra-wide, that's almost as sharp as the main lens and, of course, the massive zoom capabilities that you never have to use. But if you do, they're impressive, still, 50x isn't as insane as 100x, but it's far more than you'll probably ever need. And so you can rest easy that anytime, you need a quick, 4x or 8x zoom. The photo will still be plenty sharp.

The 10 megapixel selfie camera is fairly average but acceptable and then for video. I'd put it again right below the iPhone system, thanks to the super, steady mode and all the 8k options and the faster autofocus, but really I was having most of my fun with the main sensor and taking photos that I think, would often rival what you take from any other phone iPhone 11 Pro pixel 4, Huawei phones. This is right up there well done Samsung on these cameras just makes it feel like the gigantic camera bump is more worth it. Are you impressed that we got this far into a Galaxy Note review without talking about the s pen, yet so the s pen got some pretty dramatic technical improvements in the note 20 ultra this year, mainly that the latency is now down all the way to nine milliseconds on this better display, and that translates to Apple Pencil levels of realism and responsiveness? You love to see it. You love to hear it also.

Maybe there's this sound now when you write with the s pen that actually corresponds pretty well with how it would sound if you were writing on like a chalkboard or a pen on paper or something it's its pretty impressive, but I could also see that getting annoying to someone who uses the s pen like a lot, so you can turn that off but yeah. Technically speaking, it is a big improvement, but the s pen really overall, is the same thing. It's been for a while, which, depending on who you are, is either a fun optional accessory that comes along with this flagship or an absolutely vital tool for sketching or note-taking or annotation work. You may remember from my previous reviews: I'm not the biggest s pen person. So for someone like me, a Galaxy Note, probably isn't the best use of money, but there are people who every year wait for the latest Galaxy Note, because this phone represents the absolute best stylist experience on a phone and so for those people yeah.

This is it I could make this like a hour and a half long video. If I tried to cover all the features buried in Samsung's software, because they absolutely pack this phone to the gills, the edge lighting, the secure folder, the wireless music sharing, the air actions, the reverse wireless charging, the wireless decks is super impressive, even bixby. I mean I found, there's always something buried in here that you've either never heard about, or maybe you knew about it, but just didn't use it, because Samsung airs on the side of shoving in too many features, instead of the other way around like trying to keep it super simple and leaving things out that aren't perfect. It's like the opposite of the apple strategy, and you see that throughout using this phone from the launcher to the camera app to the settings and if there's any upside to that, it certainly makes you feel like you're more getting your money's worth. But at the end of the day, are you? Are you getting 1 300 worth of smartphone here, honestly, that's probably pushing it? I'd say you probably aren't, but the thing about Samsung launch prices is they're guaranteed to fall like this phone in three or four months will most likely cost a bit less than it does now at launch.

But if there's any phone that makes it feel like you're, getting the absolute complete package from the spec sheet to the huge incredible display to the build quality to the cameras to the battery to the stylus, you can't get anywhere else to the software. It's probably this one, but I want to end it all with this. What is a review really? Well, it's given your opinion on something you've used, try to figure out if what you're buying is worth it or not. Right and so Samsung sent us all reviewers. This Galaxy Note 20 ultra, which is really, really great phone for 300 bucks, and so we're all out since we have it early, we're all testing and enthusiastically giving this phone a shot.

But none of us, as far as I know, have the note 20, which is the thousand dollar plastic 1080p 60 hertz, in my opinion, severely overpriced phone. None of us are out enthusiastically testing and reviewing that one PSA. That's probably on purpose so note, 20 ultra is 1300 bucks. If you can swing it great. If you're looking for something similar but looking to save a bit of money, I would actually hold off on trying to just go straight to the note 20.

For now. I would wait for some reviews of that at least or maybe look to some other phones, some other galaxy, s20 plus or even some non-gaming phones, because- and this is a new thought to have now in 2020, just attaching the note name to something doesn't necessarily mean flagship quality anymore, like it used to Becca from the verge made a really great point in her video about Samsung's lineup, which is the word you used to look for to symbolize and describe the absolute best in Samsung's. Lineup used to be note, but it's not now. The word you need to look for is ultra the ultra. It's a nice phone yeah, but for 300 bucks it better.

Be that's been it thanks for watching catch, you guys, the next one, peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee