samsung galaxy note 20
ultra it is
big it's also pretty it has a great
screen there is a
huge camera bump it's actually a bit
like the galaxy
s20 ultra version of the same phone like
like actually a lot like galaxy s20
ultra
galaxy note 20 ultra s20 ultra note 20
ultra
sorry look we'll get into a few of the
differences between these two
phones later the main point right now is
that
while i don't like that the note 20
ultra starts at 300 bucks
i do like this phone and there's not
some grand
samsung reinvented the note story to
tell here
it's just you know it's a big phone but
what i like about it and a few of the
things that i don't really like about it
turn out to be just a lot of little
things
we should we should just get into it
let's get into it
so not every phone review is about specs
some phones have kind of mediocre specs
like here's the pixel 4a it's got
mediocre specs but it's a really good
phone but
this is the note ultra with a capital u
and so yeah people going for this phone
are gonna care about the specs so
let's just talk about some key ones
right at the top it has a
6.9 inch quad hd plus display that
supports hdr 10 plus
it is of course oled and it has 120
hertz refresh rate and a first for
samsung it is a variable refresh rate
samsung says that it can go all the way
down to 10 hertz if nothing is moving on
the screen and
that is supposed to save battery life
besides refresh rate
the screen is great i love the colors i
love the pixel density i don't even mind
how it curves around on the sides
but i'm going to talk about the refresh
rate again it really matters on a phone
of this class
and it really does look great you can
feel it
just all over the operating system now
one thing you should know is you can't
have the max refresh rate at 120
and get the maximum resolution on the
screen but
i don't care give me the refresh rate it
has 12 gigs of ram which
to me is enough for an android phone to
do a bunch of multitasking
and the 1300 version of this phone has
128 gigs of storage which
really samsung i know that it's
expandable with microsd but
you can't spring for 256 at this price
point come on
anyway the 512gb version costs an extra
150 bucks on top of that
the processor in this is the snapdragon
865
plus and of course it supports both
millimeter wave and
sub six versions of 5g because samsung
wants us carriers to
actually care about this phone and us
carriers only care about
5g so it's got 5g
ah 5g ran over it's got a 4 500 milliamp
hour battery and i'm getting
five and sometimes six hours of screen
time with pretty heavy use with this
thing
overnight on standby it's draining like
maybe 10
so i think battery life is great i mean
it should be this is
as i've said a big phone it's got an
in-screen
ultrasonic fingerprint sensor wireless
charging reverse wireless charging
stereo speakers
ip68 water resistance bluetooth 5 this
s pen here this huge camera bump here
and
actually we're going to save the camera
on the s pen for later because there's a
lot going on there but
anyway you get the point the specs on
this phone
are great this phone is fast and the
design of this phone well
it's very naughty and it's very ultra he
what i mean is galaxy notes are big but
they're also like
properly squared off at the corners here
they make you think of a slab and i
think that's actually good for what a
note is that it feels like
a slab there's this new matte finish on
the back that
i think looks better than glossy but
it's also just a little bit more
slippery actually at least it feels that
way to me
now for this thing being ultra e what
does ultra e mean well
here's what i think that means this
thing right here
this camera bump it's a mesa
it is a huge flat outcropping rising
spontaneously out of the vast desert
that is the back of this phone
it's big and it's squared off in fact
it's even bigger than the gigantic
camera bump on the
galaxy s20 ultra so what do you get out
of this bump
we're gonna go from easy to talk about
to complicated when we talk about the
mini cameras on the note 20 ultra first
is the ultra wide angle camera and that
one's simple it's got a 12 megapixel
sensor and the photos that come out of
it
are okay but not stunning which is kind
of par for the course for ultra wide
cameras
then there's the selfie camera which is
just 10 megapixels
and uh what is happening here samsung
i have turned off every face filter
option that i could find
and it is still painting bad makeup all
over my face
i literally look like a ham in this
photo
i know that there's good camera inside
this phone here somewhere
quit being so try hard about doing all
this face smoothing with it
telephoto there's good news for the
telephoto lens it is a 12 megapixel
sensor and it uses a periscope to
extend the range so it can do 5x optical
zoom
and up to 50x space zoom digitally
now what's interesting is that is a
smaller megapixel count
and a smaller zoom than what is on the
galaxy s20 ultra
and you know what good even at 50x on
this thing
things don't look great but they still
look better than they did at 100x on
that other phone
it's still kind of a party trick once
you get over 10 or 15x but
you know what's great having a photo
that zoomed in
10 or 15 times that i would actually be
willing to post somewhere
i like the zoom on this camera okay so
the main camera on here is
your standard wide angle lens but it has
samsung's 108 megapixel
sensor behind it now usually those
pixels get combined or
bend into just a 12 megapixel image but
you can take 108 megapixel center image
full size thing if you want and you know
what this is the juice right here
samsung's whole deal with the ultra
phones is it wants to take this big 108
megapixel sensor and do
cool stuff with it it is how samsung
wants to separate itself
out from google and apple in the
photography department
now when i tried to do it before with
the galaxy s20 ultra
that didn't go so hot because this
sensor just couldn't focus fast enough
and i am happy to say that on the note
20 ultra that problem has been
fixed with a laser it's using lasers for
auto focusing
and i haven't had a problem with
focusing speed
at all i just want to say that using
this camera system here
is a blast you have so many options but
they're all kind of approachable even in
pro mode it's kind of approachable and
as long as you're in good light you can
just mess with them all and get
really good results like you can shoot
video in
8k if you want to i don't think you
should but you totally can
but what you can also do in the pro
camera mode is mess with the microphones
you can use
the front-facing mic the rear-facing mic
an omni mic that listens everywhere
a bluetooth microphone like in your
earbuds or whatever
or a usb microphone and typically i'm
not the kind of person that thinks that
shooting pro
video on a phone makes a lot of sense
but it's actually starting to make more
sense to me here if they just up the
quality a little bit
get closer to an iphone 11 pro you could
do some really interesting things with
this thing
oh yeah picture quality we should talk
about the pictures that come out of the
thing
the note 20 is still a half step behind
the google pixel 4 or the apple iphone
11 pro
part of that is just the color balance
that samsung likes and we can agree to
disagree on color balance but
i just can't get on board with the over
sharpening and over smoothing that
samsung tends to do
now interestingly sometimes that works
in the note 20s favor so
with night mode i actually prefer the
note 20 photos to the pixel 4's photos
because everything just looks
a little bit smoother in the dark in a
way that feels actually kind of natural
so usually talking about the cameras is
like the most interesting differentiated
thing on
a high-end smartphone but with the note
20 that's not actually
the case the main reason to get a note
really is
the s pen and i think that samsung has
done something
really special with it this year now i
am not talking about the
wacky air gestures that you can do to
control your phone from far away
i'm not talking about the fact that the
stylist is finally on the left-hand side
of the phone so lefties get a year where
they feel special instead of
writing's always getting the year i'm
also not talking about the improved
latency when you're writing on the
screen although
i gotta say that really is noticeable it
really does feel really good to write on
this screen
now i'm talking about something else and
i can't believe i'm gonna say this but i
am
talking about samsung's notes app it
might be
the best notes app that you can get on a
phone yes
i just said that but look samsung's
notes app
already did stuff that apple notes is
just catching up to
and microsoft's onenote on mobile can't
do it all like
lets you highlight your handwriting and
then copy out the plain text
it also lets you export to docs or like
now you can export the powerpoint
it has really really good handwriting
recognition
even on my terrible handwriting and
god i love the software the hits keep on
coming
it can realign your handwriting so that
it looks nicer straight down on a page
it seems dumb but it really does matter
when you're trying to come back to them
later
it can natively annotate pdfs finally
but still samsung also added folder
organization this year if you care about
that
it can do the thing where it records
audio while you're taking notes and then
later on you can go look over your notes
again tap on the spot where you jotted
something down
and you can hear what the phone recorded
that is
great for interviews or for lectures or
whatever
i mean at this point the only thing i
don't like about samsung notes is that
it's
samsung that's a really mean thing to
say what i mean is that it's
really really good on the note and
everywhere else
did you know that there's a pc version
of samsung notes i just learned that
because now they've added
instant syncing for notes there so
that's helpful but
the really big deal is later on this
year they're going to add the option to
integrate with microsoft onenote now
it's only an
export from samsung notes to onenote but
what that means is all of the work that
you put into taking a bunch of notes in
this thing
won't be stuck on this thing or the next
thing you can actually buy a different
phone someday and just use microsoft
onenote
you might not be hanging with me on this
one you might not believe that samsung
notes is great but
i promise you it's great but even if
it's great it doesn't mean that you
should buy this phone to get
samsung notes but you know what
creditware do
and actually speaking of onenote and
microsoft there are a
bunch of integrations coming reminders
and tasks will sync
both ways to outlook you're gonna be
able to run multiple android apps at
once
on your windows pc and of course samsung
and microsoft are touting the note as
this
great xbox game pass ultimate phone and
yeah playing xbox games
on a relatively huge phone screen is uh
it's pretty great also steady is fine
too
[Music]
so after all that yeah samsung galaxy
note 20
ultra i think it's pretty good but the
things that make it good are
all the little things like samsung notes
better low light photography
all those microphone options when you're
shooting video the variable refresh rate
the variable refresh rate making battery
life
better no fingerprint smudges on the
back the low latency on the stylus
they're all really nice but none of them
are a reason to go out and buy this
phone
if you've got a note 10 or even a note 9
i really don't think you should upgrade
you know one of the reasons that people
buy a note phone it isn't the stylist
it's because
it's a super nice kind of flashy
phone but this is not a flashy
update it's more like a spec bump bump
it's more like a spec bump over last
year but that still makes it
one of the best top tier android phones
that you can buy right now and that
that's not a little thing hey everybody
thanks so much for watching let me know
what you think of the note 20 ultra
downstairs
in the comments are you waiting for the
fold or maybe you want to get a oneplus
instead
talk about that down there if you're
looking for another video to watch
becca just reviewed the galaxy beans
that's what they're called not the buds
live
the beans they're headphones and we're
calling them beans