Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Impressions: Ultra Premium! By Marques Brownlee

What's up MHD here and welcome to your very first look and my first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy note 20 and note 20 ultra so Samsung's unpacked event is today there's a lot of stuff being announced today, and we'll get to all of it eventually. But we're going to cover the two main new things, which are the two new flagship phones, and here they are and as you can see, they look just like the leaks. You might have seen some of those two huge phones. This is that bronze color that they're in here, and they have a lot of the same DNA as notes of the past in both design and feature set. But there is a lot of new stuff here and since there are two new phones, I'm going to start with the note 20 ultra, because that's where a lot of the sweet interesting new features are. So let me just get the specs out of the way right off the top, because that's the easiest part to take in, so they're top-notch, snapdragon, 865, plus up to 12 gigs of ram at 256, gigs of storage and that's still expandable, via micro SD card slot, up top that's still pretty rare and there's a 4 500 William hour battery inside a triple camera array which we'll get to in a second and a huge 6.9 inch, 1440p 120 hertz AMOLED display with that little selfie camera hole, punch cutout in the middle up top there. It is a bit of a curve display over the edges, which I personally wish we'd stop seeing, but there's no denying even from my limited hands-on time with it.

This is probably one of the best displays in any smartphone and, of course, we'll know better once we have it in hand for a longer time for the full review. But hey that's what we expect at this point from Galaxy Note I mean just look at this thing, but one big asterisk, though, is even for the steep price of I haven't told you yet, but this phone starts at 1 300, even for all that money, you still just like s20 ultra can't use it at its highest frame rate and highest resolution at the same time. So sure enough, if you dig into the display settings any fine motion, smoothing is 1080p out the box, so there's either standard 60, hertz or adaptive. So you can't lock it at 120 hertz, but it will move between 120 and 60 depending on what's happening on the phone. But if you go into resolution and switch from 1080p up to 1440p, it tells you this doesn't allow for adaptive higher fresh rates.

So I guess I will be rocking this phone again at 1080p and 120 hertz, because those extra frames look better than the extra pixels. Overall, though, I'm a fan of the note 20 ultra design just looking at it, it still feels boxy in my hand the way I like it, the bezels look impossibly thin and overall, the aesthetic with the matte bezels and satin finish on the back, just it screams premium. I mean you look at this thing, and you can tell you feel it: it's premium, glass and metal from top to bottom, it's great, but then let's check out this camera bump. So the rounded rectangle housing, the triple cameras and the Galaxy Note 20 ultra is absolutely massive. I wish I had measured it when I was here with the limited hands on time just to see exactly how big it is, but it's huge just like the s20 ultra and I think it even looks bigger because it's just on one giant raised slab rectangle instead of like the s20 ultra's double stepped curved slab.

Basically, it's a really pronounced defining feature of this phone's design, and it's funny I actually kind of started naturally holding the phone up from the back by propping my finger under the huge ledge that the camera makes, because the phone is so big. But anyway inside this bump, you have the main camera suite you'd expect with the standard ultra-wide and telephoto, and this time in the note 20 ultra the telephoto lens is in fact a periscope lens nested sideways in the phone allowing you 5x optical zoom, and up to a 50x space zoom, not quite the 100x, that they printed on the back of the galaxy s20 ultra. But I think Samsung realizes. That was a mistake and I think we're all okay with maxing out at 50x. As long as the quality of the zoom, we actually want, like 3x and 5 and 10x are actually better, and it seems to be, but of course that will have to be tested for the full review.

They also kept 8k video from the s20 ultra and added a few different aspect ratios. But it's worth noting that all of them will shoot from the 64 megapixel telephoto camera, not the main camera still, so there is still going to be a crop if you shoot in 8k. In case you were wondering, but of course this wouldn't be a Galaxy Note. If we didn't have that s pen, which is moved over to the left side of the phone and this year, the s pen makes one particularly huge leap forward and that's in latency. So latency is the delay between when you actually touch the screen and when there's actually a register on the screen for what you just did, and so the latency of the s pen was up at around 42 milliseconds, all the way up to the last generation and with the note 20 ultra they've, gotten it down to nine milliseconds so about a fifth of the time, and you can definitely feel the difference.

You can see the difference. So the s pen has now arrived at apple, pencil levels of responsiveness. In fact, it's matched that nine millisecond number, so there's really zero perceptible gap between the pen and what I'm actually writing. So it feels like I'm basically writing or painting directly onto the display, which is awesome, and this is great for frequent s. Pen users, not just for writing text, but even for maneuvering around the UI, with a pen like I have for years and that combined with a lot of the other subtle Samsung, notes, usability improvements and feature enhancements, and things like that.

Just feels like a great update for Galaxy Note for those who rely on this accessory. So that's note 20 ultra and again, that's that's. The ultra premium super high-end flagship 1299, like we said kind of the opposite of the Pixel 4a. I just reviewed, but then, of course, there's also now the note 20, which to me is a little more confusing and that's because when you look at it on paper and with all the different things that note 20 cuts down from note, 20 ultra and there's a lot uh, you would think. Oh, this is going to be a significantly less expensive phone to be a more accessible, cheaper note to get people hooked on the s pen and then want them to get the ultra later.

But the note 20 still starts at 9.99, so picking it up for the first time, you may not immediately notice a lot of those cut downs. It's still got that bronze look. It actually has even more of a soft textured finish on the back, and it's a little lighter than the ultra, but that lightness is because it's a plastic back, not glass, so that's number one! Then the display up front here it still looks great, as you can tell still has the little hole. Punch cut out still has great brightness and color, but it's now a slightly smaller 6.7 inches, and it's flat, which I actually like it really locks in the phone's boxy shape even more than the rounded note 20 ultra. But it also now has a slightly larger hole, punch cut out and slightly bigger bezels all the way around, and it's now 1080p and 60 hertz, and then you get to the specs, and they're again.

Almost the same snapdragon 865 plus is still there, but it now maxes out at eight gigs of ram and 128 gigs of storage, but it also now doesn't have expandable storage, like the ultra does so that 128 is your absolute max. Then the new s, pen, again it's still here, but with not quite the same blazing fast 9, millisecond latency. Instead, it cuts it down to 26 milliseconds, still really fast and nice to see an improvement of about 50 percent, but yeah not the same as the ultra, and it's also a slightly smaller 4300 William hour battery instead of 4500 and the camera system, maxes out at 30x zoom instead of 50x, which again is not really that big of a deal. But it's because the note 20 doesn't use a periscope camera like the ultra. Does its just a standard 3x telephoto shooter, which is why the camera bump also isn't as massive here? Basically, the note 20 is to the note 20 ultra what the s20 is to the s20 ultra, it's a slightly smaller, slightly less premium flagship in its own right with a few cut downs from the ultra premium stuff that most people hopefully won't notice, and I think this is mostly a good idea like the cut down from what the 30x versus 50x zoom.

Who really cares that much uh the 26 millisecond to 9 millisecond response time again? I had limited hands-on time with them, but I actually didn't really notice that big of a difference either they're, both very responsive but there's something about asking a thousand bucks for a 1080p 60 hertz plastic phone with 128 gigs of non-expandable storage tops like just some of that, doesn't feel quite up to the money. I'm going to say that in the first time in the notes, history, that this note 20 is a bit overpriced, I think you can straight up get better phones for a thousand bucks or get equivalent phones for less like this. Isn't my review, but I think there's going to be people cross shopping in a store who will see note 20 for a thousand bucks, and then we'll see galaxy s20 next to it or OnePlus 8 pro next to it that phones that cost less money that feel like they actually give you more. I think the one reason you would get the note 20 is that the s pen is still pretty unrivaled in this smartphone world. As far as premium stylist experiences and some people will want that- and I think Samsung knows that and there's also still Samsung note stuff and some note exclusive stuff, like DEX wireless.

So if you remember what DEX could do on a desktop display, you don't need an adapter for it anymore or a special cable. It does it wirelessly via Miracast that stuff's really impressive. But I guess I'm just curious how many people are going to want that stuff versus who will just go turn around and buy a s20 or something cheaper instead, but I'm curious what you think, let me know in the comments below and what you think of note 20 versus note, 20, ultra and them existing at the same time and if you haven't already subscribed for the full review, definitely make sure to do that, so you're among the first to see it also and until then, thanks for watching catch, you guys later peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee