Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Review: A $1000 Android! By Marques Brownlee

Hey, what is up guys of rabbi HD here and this phone, this Galaxy Note 8. This is the best phone Samsung makes right now, I'll go ahead and say that right off the bat, it's also the most expensive phone Samsung made. So last year's Note 7 kind of went onto the radar because of the sales, stopping and obviously everything that happened to it, but it was low-key one of my favorite phones of last year before all that sort of blew up. Oh wow, that's a that's a bad joke, but Galaxy Note 8 is again trying to be one of those phones that checks all the boxes, and that is a great smartphone. This is clearly Samsung's attempt at making their best smartphone possible. It's swinging for the fences.

It's trying to hit a home run. So let's treat it like that and let's see if you should buy one or not, let's break it down. So if you recall some of my previous reviews, I've had about five pillars of a great smartphone those five and if a phone does all those five things. Well then, it's probably worth the money seems like a complete package. I'll give you the green light to buy it recommendation is go Galaxy.

Note 8 does four of those five things really well like not just good but great, but then kind of fall short on the last thing, but then it kind of makes it up its own sixth category with a bunch of extra stuff that it kind of throws in there and doesn't have to nail this category. It's not part of the essential five pillars. I, don't think, but it kind of is why people would end up buying this phone. It's what makes the note, so Samsung's build quality has been on point for a while. Now this is a refinement of last year, which is a refinement of the year before that and the year before that.

But you can see the display melts over the edges of the sides and gets pretty damn close to the top and bottom bezels. It's not bezel this, but I'd say that 83% screen to body ratio is very 2017, and it's super refined versus previous years, like I said so. The edges aren't sharp anymore. It has this overall boxy shape, but there's still an aluminum rail to hold, there's no camera bump or protrusion at all on the back, so it doesn't rock on a table and I honestly think Samsung has had the best industrial design in smartphones in the past two or three years, and the note is no exception to that rule. I mean they kind of played a part in making this glass sandwich design more popular.

In today's world of smartphones. We see it everywhere now, which some people don't like because of fingerprints, maybe or possibly dropping it, maybe being more breakable, but even those two things could be easily fixable with some like a deep branch skin and that has zero effect on wireless charging. The worst part about it, I'd say, is the fingerprint reader placement it's way up high next to the camera, and on this huge phone it means there's absolutely no natural way to hold the phone while using it and be able to reach this fingerprint. It requires a like a hand shuffle to reach it. It's not a huge issue because you don't have to use a fingerprint scanner, but I prefer for the record a fingerprint reader in the middle of the back of the phone, so yeah for this badass.

Looking super sturdy, metal and glass premium, fully water sealed like edge to edge, display beautiful when clean type of look, Galaxy, Note 8, definitely checks that box and then the display. It's also the single best display in any smartphone again. Somehow they keep getting better at this. This time. It's a six point: three inch 20 960 by 1440, Super AMOLED display, and it's gorgeous in all conditions.

I sent us a couple of months ago: galaxy s, 8 and galaxy s.8 plus had the best display. Now note: its panel is the same resolution but bigger and brighter 1200 nits, now versus a thousand and there's pretty much perfectly viewable outdoors, which really matters when navigating or in a car or something. And of course, since it's an OLED colors are awesome, blacks are pitch. Black contrast ratios are incredible: it's super sharp, it's even HDR 10 compliant, and it still keeps the pressure sensitive home button at the bottom of the glass. On top of all of that side, note I still think this implementation is best.

We're probably gonna, see a lot more edge to edge displays and phones this year, and you kind of wonder what you do with the home button. We used to see on every smartphone I think until we see that fingerprint reader under the glass, this sort of pressure, sensitive area to go home whenever you want, is the way that we should do it. But I think the bottom line here is in the display. Department Galaxy, Note 8 also checks that box and then the camera on the note 8 is still one of the best in any smartphone again, it's rocking a 12 megapixel F, 1.7 primary camera and an additional 12 megapixel camera with an F, 2.4 telephoto lens, and this time both have optical image, stabilization, making it the first phone to do that, and the quality is about what you'd expect from Samsung. It's the same characteristics, you've kind of seen by now, just a little extra saturation in the colors, a little extra sharpening from corn to corner it's like a little less realistic, but a little prettier than real life, and I'm continually impressed at how well these things handle the more extreme colors and high dynamic range seriously.

Very few cameras handle Reds this well in this shot. The Sun is actually right behind the hotel, but you can see the detail still in the clouds in the sky and in most outdoor shots. You can count on getting detail both in the lightest and darkest parts of the exposure. Even this backlit shot looks totally fine, and it's safe to bring this thing into low light, of course, as well, obviously being optically stabilized and letting in a ton of light, helps out a lot with that. So there's a lot of good things happening with the camera, puts it firmly in confident point shoot territory, meaning if you see a subject that you just want to take a picture of just a double top of the home button point and shoot, and you'll probably get a good shot so that second lens they added for that telephoto, zoom I found it kind of hit or miss.

Actually, it's not as good as the main camera and I can actually tell the difference in quality with the 1x vs.2X photos, so sometimes I actually didn't want to use it as much. I would rather take a photo with the main camera and zoom in a bit later, which kind of defeats the purpose. But so one thing it sometimes did really work well with was live photos which is their version of the portrait mode. We've seen coming to so many smartphones lately. So with the note 8, it's called live photos because you can adjust the amount of blur you have in the background and see the effect in the viewfinder live, which is pretty cool.

You take the photo, and then you can adjust the amount of blur after the photo is taken, and it also takes a simultaneous photo with the main camera. Just in case that portrait one isn't good enough. So we're doing a lot with that. Second camera, you may or may not find it useful. You may never even use it, but the fact that it's there, and it works well alongside one of the best main cameras in any smartphone means it definitely checks that box and then with performance.

This thing is a monster. It has some high end, some might say best-in-class hardware on the inside Snapdragon 835, Arena, 546, gigs of ram, and it moves through Samsung's skin. Just fine, that's not quite ? the smoothness level of phones that are much closer to stock. Android I feel the need to mention this, like I, noticed that, mostly when scrolling through a lot of big heavy stuff or through multitasking, especially it's not quite as fast, but it's not really a big enough deal to be a bad thing like it's just a tiny delay. I noticed because I use a lot of other phones but gaming and moving through apps and web browsing and all that other stuff has no problems on this phone, but that doesn't mean I can't wish for a Google Play edition like old times.

So, as you probably expect from a flagship that has this kind of specs inside it checks the performance box too. So then we get to battery life and that's the one box, I can't say Galaxy Note 8 checks. It does not have great battery life. This phone has a 3300 William hour battery, which would ordinarily sound like a pretty solid size. But then you consider your packing like the world's brightest 6.3 inch smartphone display, and then it starts to sound a little lacking for perspective. The galaxy s 8 plus has a smaller display, but has a larger 3500 William hour battery, so for that it has much better battery life.

So, first, the note has an entire column in the side of it that you have to use for the stylus, so you can't fit battery in there and then also the fact that they kind of don't want to push the battery to the limits. On the note because of what happened last time, they tried that that kind of explains why it's a 3300 William hour battery in this one. So with this phone you kind of have to play the battery life versus a resolution game out. The box you're going to get this preset, which is in the middle you're scaling down the resolution a bit. So it's kind of like they know, you're not going to get the best battery life and that right off the bat is gonna.

Get you a little less than 4 hours of screen on time, at least with my types of usage. When you turn the resolution further down, you can definitely ensure you get to a full day, but that's a little less enjoyable and when you max out the resolution, which they kind of, don't want you to do unless you turn on performance mode, which is the mode that maxes the brightness and resolution you're going to get less than 4 hours for sure, you're going to get 3 and a half hours of screen on time, and you'll probably have to top up the battery at some point during the day. So that's a pretty unfortunate stat. The Galaxy Note used to be that phone that power users get because of the battery life. I, remember back in the early days of the Galaxy Note at CES, like all the YouTubers took this phone to CES because it checked all the boxes, it had a huge screen, and it lasted forever.

This is just not that same phone. It does not check the box of great battery life. Now all that being said, there is still the point that I made at the beginning of the video, which is the note kind of adds this sixth category of the extras and from using this phone, it's pretty clear that this is still the phone to buy because of the extras. Is these little things that this phone has that others? Simply don't it's the iris scanner, if you're into that for unlocking your phone with just your eyes? It's the expandable storage via a micro SD. If you have a big media library or take a lot of photos and videos, it's the headphone jack yeah.

That's that's become a thing. Many phones don't have now the full water-resistance, the dual cameras and all their features, the Bluetooth 5.0 with dual audio and everything that comes with that and the s-pen, which I'd say, is the best stylus experience in any phone right now for people who take a lot of notes or write a lot of things down. So these are things that separate the note 8 in a little way from other phones and give people that unique reason to buy it. As a matter of fact, it seems like the only phone this one doesn't really separate itself from what those extras are Samsung's own Galaxy, S, 8 plus, which has all of those things except for the dual cameras and the stylus, and the difference between them is about 150 bucks. So that really is the biggest challenge.

When you consider all the boxes you want to have checked, isn't worth the extra money to get a phone. That also has the dual cameras and a stylus, but maybe doesn't have quite as good of a battery life, especially when you consider the galaxy s, 8 plus cost less. So, if you're like me- and you just want the best possible most complete phone, then Galaxy Note 8 is definitely still to buy and you kind of just have to deal with the intermittent charging up during the day, but you still have really fast charging and wireless charging. So if that's available to you, it's not a big deal, but also consider galaxy. Si plus delivers a really, really similar experience checks, one extra box with good battery and cost a bit less money.

So that's a consideration if you're looking to save a few bucks, so that's pretty much it. Thank you for watching, talked to you guys, the next one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee