Samsung Galaxy Nope 20! By Marques Brownlee

So up MHD here- and this is the Samsung Galaxy note 20. It's like the little brother of the Galaxy Note, 20 ultra that I just reviewed, but as a package, this is a very weird phone. It's a very confused phone, but let's just back up for a second. First, I bought this phone from b h for with tax and shipping included 1086 dollars. But after using this phone for a bit, it feels like Samsung, never really made up their mind on. If this was supposed to be a premium phone or not like for a thousand bucks, you would think this should be a premium phone for sure right.

But as you use the phone and go down the list of features and specs slowly, that feels more and more off, like every meaningful feature, is cut down a bit from the note 20 ultra like the screen, for example, if that's where we start it's a little smaller, but no big deal, it's still 6.7 inches, and it's even flat on the edges, which I honestly prefer and Samsung still gives you a lot of the edge display features. Minus edge lighting, which I don't think anyone considers a necessary feature, but it's 1080p and 60hz then has a slightly larger hole, punch cutout for the same 10, megapixel, selfie camera and the same ultrasonic fingerprint reader. Underneath now the 1080p resolution. Okay, fine! I can deal with that. After all, I actually set the resolution on the note 20 ultra to 1080p, but that's because you have to get 120 hertz, but okay, even if visually 1080p is fine, you still get the great colors and the brightness of the Samsung panel, and it's still really thin bezels and to me, it honestly looks great for most things and if you're not a stickler for refresh rate, it's no big deal watching videos and taking photos and all that stuff is awesome on this screen.

But for the price for a thousand bucks on a flagship in 2020, you should get a high refresh rate screen right, but that's not the worst part of this phone. The upgraded s pen is physically the same on this note 20 as the ultra, but the latency doesn't drop as much because it is still a 60 hertz display. So it drops from 42 to 26 milliseconds, not all the way down to the 9 milliseconds of the ultra understandable. I absolutely did not notice it's still incredibly fast and responsive and does all the same stuff. I talk about in the ultra review.

It's definitely not the worst part of this phone. The camera array is also cut down and different, as you might have been able to guess from the significantly smaller camera bump. So instead of the ultra's huge 108, megapixel primary camera and the periscope 5x optical zoom, you have a far more reasonable 12 megapixel main camera, 12 megapixel ultra-wide and 64 megapixels, 3x zoom and the photos and videos from these cameras are honestly very similar to the ones from note.20 ultra Samsung has a look, a very pretty colorful, saturated HDR. Look that I do like, and this phone also accomplishes that look and there's even again. Some advantages to this system.

The not so giant sensor, focuses quickly without even needing laser autofocus. But while you keep 8k video, it also does cut down some of the other highest end. Ultra features like the 108 megapixel mode, the 50x space zoom only goes to 30x max, but again, if most people just point and shoot and 30x is enough from the back row of the bleachers to catch your kid out on the far side of the soccer field, then honestly most people probably won't miss these couple of bleeding edge features. The camera is not the worst part of this phone. So, okay, let's take a look, then at this spec sheet, so snapdragon 865, plus 8 gigs of ram 128 gigs of non-expandable storage, 4300 William hour battery okay.

So let's break this down so snapdragon 865, plus and 8 gigs of ram as the only spec. That's high end, it's cut down a bit from the 12 gigs of ram on the ultra, but you know this should still offer high-end performance without a doubt, and it does then 4300 William hour battery again fine. Actually, it is slightly smaller than the note 20 ultras battery, but this is, of course, a slightly smaller phone and since it's only a 1080p 60hz display, which is usually the biggest sucker of battery you're, actually looking at a slightly better overall battery life on a charge than the ultra. So that's fine, but 128 gigs, as the only spec of non-expandable storage, at least in the US, feels a bit small, and you know maybe some people are totally okay with this, but on a thousand dollar phone, where you expect to probably use the cameras. All the time take a lot of photos where you can take 8k videos and there are tons of games and apps.

You would just think you would give at least 256. The snapdragon note 20. Ultra weirdly has a 128 or 512 internally, but at least the ultra has expandable storage via a micro SD card slot. This phone doesn't have that so maybe on the ultra, where you could get away with 128 on this one. That's all you get so the specs overall, while they're still high end they're, definitely starting to feel the squeeze of the slightly lower price here, but that's still not the worst part of this phone.

So you have the cut down specs the cut down battery the cut down storage, the cut down cameras, the cut down display, but none of this makes headlines quite like the cut down materials. This phone is plastic. Now, okay, plastic gets a bad rap on smartphones, I'm guilty of not really ever being a huge fan of plastic, but I will say: plastic has its place in the smartphone world, we've all heard, Zach say: glasses, glass and glass. Breaks glass is more expensive and more fragile. So on phones like the Pixel 4a, for example, you'll never hear me complain that they chose plastic and the plastic here on the note.20 is even a little more satin and a little more reflection averse than the ultra. It does a great job of hiding fingerprints and all the micro scratches that you usually get with plastic and at the risk of sounding like I'm, defending it.

This plastic actually has some advantages over glass like this. Huge phone now actually feels and is much lighter, which can make a previously unwieldy. Ultra phone suddenly feel a little more manageable and, of course, it's less likely to shatter, and at the end of the day, when you guys told me that 80 of you use a case on your phone, no matter what, then I guess whether it was the glass note, 20, ultra or the plastic of the note 20 people were just going to put a case on this anyway, so I guess it just makes sense for that to be one of the areas where Samsung decided that they should save money. So even this phone being made of plastic is still not the worst part of this phone. The worst part about the Galaxy Note 20 is the launch price they picked of a thousand dollars.

There is no way this phone should ever justifiably be a thousand dollars out of your pocket. As flossy carter would say, the price is too damn high but see. The thing is, this phone is actually not that bad, but when you combine this phone with that note branding and that thousand dollar price, it gets very confusing. But if you just step back and remove the price- and the note name I mean this is a pretty unique phone. You get the s pen, you get wireless decks, you get the Samsung feature set.

There really isn't anything out there that quite matches it in terms of features. It just should have been like seven hundred dollars. Instead of a thousand, I genuinely think Samsung was confused like they, they weren't, they didn't make up their mind on if they were going to make a premium phone or not like it starts off. As a Galaxy Note and galaxy notes are always high end. I get that, but actually really like what they did last year, not the rainbow reflection part, but the part where they made two different notes for the first time, the flagship high-end one and then a slightly smaller, but a little more attainable version of the same thing where they sort of understood for the first time that people didn't want to have to spend the most money on the biggest phone.

But you still get big screen stylus for not as much money. So then this year comes along, and they do the same thing. They got Galaxy Note ultra-high end, and then they got another more attainable note, which is also in the note series. So still high end also has a snapdragon, 865 plus so still high ends, but then the rest they just cut down too far: plastic 1080p, 60, hertz, non-expandable 128. They cut down too far.

So I think, there are two alternative paths they could have taken, probably should have taken with this phone. One would just be donen't cut down quite as much and commit to that thousand dollar price point for this phone. You probably should include higher refresh rate and more base storage at this point, so 120 hertz, like the rest of Samsung's high-end, lineup and 256 512 or just put expandable storage in this phone or two just commits to making a more competitively priced. Lower end Galaxy Note like they could have just made this the note 20 light or the note 20e swap out the snapdragon 865, plus that big expensive chip with the snapdragon 765 g. Then you have a 700 phone that you can compete big phone, big stylus way, lower price like I think that would have been fascinating and potentially really great for this line, and it probably would have eaten alive a lot of the sales of some other right around 700 phones sitting at 1080p, 60 hertz, like lg velvet, but I think the reason Samsung didn't do.

That is because that would have also been a little confusing in their lineup to have a new Galaxy Note sitting at a lower price than some s series and starts to cannibalize some of those sales, and also just having a 600 price difference between two notes is kind of a lot looks weird. So as a result, they sort of straddled all this stuff, and we ended up with this slightly confusing terrible deal of a thousand dollar plastic.1080P 60hz note 20. , and I can't really recommend most people buy this note 20 at this price, as long as there's other phones like s20, plus and OnePlus 8 pro and others that are just more phone for the same or less money. But if you absolutely need an s pen and just can't spend 1 300 bucks, I guess I'd say fine, go for it because, instead of the note 10 Samsung just now promised three major android updates for their flagships. Starting now- and it looks like note- 10s won't be getting that.

So if you're, in that tiny sliver, and you've got to have the s pen, then Samsung made this phone just for you. If you're not that person you'd, probably yeah nope, you shouldn't buy this phone either way. That's been. It hopes you enjoyed this episode of nope tech thanks for watching catch. You guys in the next one peace so shout out to expression for sponsoring this video.

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Source : Marques Brownlee