Samsung Galaxy Note10+ long-term review

Conclusion

The Galaxy Note10+ turned out an unlikely favorite at the office. After repeated conversations how it's nothing all that impressive - little more than just an S10+ with a stylus; an incremental upgrade over the Note9, you name it - we know you had the same sentiments in late August, more people went ahead and bought one than in previous years. And, perhaps more importantly, we kept more of them into the holiday season than is usually the norm in our fast-paced (read always looking for change) environment.

It's not because the Note10+ is flawless. But when we try to list the things we're not thrilled about, we come up with stuff like the missing headphone jack, the 2x-only telephoto, the occasional accidental touch input, the iffy fingerprint reader experience - all of them valid considerations, but none really consequential.

The beautiful AMOLED display brings smiles to our faces every time we play 'Our Planet' on Netflix, the battery life inspires confidence and lets us go about our busy days uninterrupted, and the cameras take pictures that make fond memories look almost as good as when we were there.

Oh, and there are smaller things to like too - the loudspeakers are among the best you can find on a phone, software is not just usable but actually even enjoyable, base storage is more than you'll realistically need, fast charging is fast, the S Pen has even more features (to test once and forget about?). We could probably go on, but we don't need any more convincing for ourselves - those Galaxy Notes are staying. Until the S11, that is.

Note: We've used Exynos-powered Note10+ units (and the occasional Note10) for this long-term review, so all of our assessments made here are based on living with those versions of the handsets. While in the past there were meaningful differences in various aspects of performance between Exynos and Snapdragon variants of Samsung flagships, it is our understanding that with the Note10 generation those have been brought down to a minimum and our findings should hold true for both versions.