Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra long-term review

Conclusion

The Galaxy Note20 Ultra is, in our subjective opinion, the best flagship smartphone Samsung has ever made. We're not counting the new S21 Ultra just yet, because it's still too fresh out of the oven, but that one aside, this is peak Samsung, clearly.

Whether the Note20 Ultra is also the best Galaxy Note ever made is harder to ascertain, primarily because the moving of the S Pen to the left side might impact the usability of what has remained the only clear differentiator between the S and Note lines. If you're right handed, that's not a great position for the S Pen to be in, there's no way around this. You can get used to it, but it's definitely not ideal. On the other hand (excuse the pun), lefties all around the world will definitely be happy, even if their numbers aren't as high - and we're assuming the amount of fans the Note line has out of those who are left handed is a much smaller number still.

There are things that the Galaxy Note20 Ultra does very well. Its screen is, in terms of quality, the best of 2020, for example. The phone is also the best looking one ever made, in this reviewer's opinion, and it's not just pretty but the design is striking and instantly recognizable as both a Samsung phone but also a unique Samsung phone. Iconic, dare we say it. The feel of the satin-like finish on the back is exquisite too, and handling is very good for such a big phone, even if the corners do cut into your palm somewhat.

The cameras are top notch for sure, but we can't call them the absolute best, neither for stills nor for video. The iPhones take the cake for the latter, while for the former there are Android devices out there that do things better. If you're not a stickler for details, though, you're unlikely to care, and you may even prefer 'the Samsung look' to objectively better quality. The Note20 Ultra also has you covered with a great amount of versatility when it comes to framing thanks to its wide-ultrawide-periscope zoom arrangement on the back.

Performance is excellent despite the fact that our unit has the Exynos 990 chipset, which seems to be inferior to the Snapdragon 865 that models in other parts of the world got. Smoothness, once updated to One UI 3 with Android 11, is the best we've ever felt on a Samsung smartphone, and it's a very obvious improvement compared to the S20 Ultra on One UI 2.x (though we haven't retested that one with One UI 3 to compare head-to-head). Fingerprint unlocking speed has received a significant boost after the update too, so it turns out that ultrasonic sensors weren't inherently slower than optical ones, it was just the software holding things back.

Battery life is very good, with the phone likely to last a full day for most people, if not those with very intensive use cases. The stereo speakers are among the best sounding we've ever heard, and probably the loudest, subjectively. It's a joy to consume content on this phone, whether that be listening to podcasts or watching videos. The vibration motor is excellent too, easily among the best we've ever felt, even though we think it could be put to more use throughout the UI. We haven't encountered any connectivity issues whatsoever, and that's also a huge plus because this is still not always a given for every device we have for a long-term review, unfortunately.

The S Pen is still unique in the mobile world, thanks to its many features and now record-breaking latency. It's a good experience to use it, from the standpoint of how much you can do with it, and how easy it is to use, but we'd wager that most people don't ever need a stylus on their smartphone. And it's not just us - had this been a make or break feature for many people, Samsung's leading flagship line in terms of sales would have been the Note family, but it's not. So while we usually praise Samsung for sticking with the S Pen, maybe it's time to wonder whether it doesn't make more sense to simply support it on S series flagships instead of creating an entirely different family just for this one added feature. Even Samsung seems to think so too, as the S21 Ultra now has S Pen support, even if the stylus isn't built-in.

Maybe that's the future. Remember when everyone bashed Sony for releasing two very similar flagship handsets every year a few years ago? Well, Samsung has been doing exactly that too, but it smartly markets them as two very different, very separate things. They aren't. Sure, the company is obviously employing two different design teams nowadays (just compare the Note20 Ultra to the S20 Ultra and you'll see what we mean), and we'd hate for one of them to be let go, but seriously - why does the Note line need to exist again?

It started off by focusing on two things that other phones didn't have: a huge screen and a stylus. The former advantage is long gone, while the latter is probably nice to have for a very small minority of consumers. And those could very well be served by an S Ultra model plus a separate purchase of an S Pen with a special case to hold it. That's what's starting to happen with the S21 Ultra, although that S Pen doesn't have Bluetooth so it can't replicate all of the Note20's S Pen's features, but hopefully with the S22 Ultra that will change and Samsung's flagship lineup will be simplified. It's high time for that.

Quick rant aside, let's now turn to the Note20 Ultra's not so great aspects, because there are some of those too. The screen may be amazing in quality, but it can't do both maximum refresh rate and maximum resolution at the same time, you still have to give one up, which is ridiculous for such an expensive device in a world in which some of its competitors do pull off this seemingly impossible task without breaking a sweat.

Speaking of the display, accidental touches from holding it are much rarer than on any other Samsung with a curved screen, but they're still there, and this is quite hilarious to see when phones like the Huawei Mate 40 Pro, with a much curvier panel, suffer from zero such issues.

Battery life is good but it could have been better had the battery been larger - the S Pen literally, physically got in the way of that. This is the biggest cell ever put into a Note, but if we're assuming that professionals of all kinds are more likely to buy this phone for its stylus, then it's those people who most need great endurance, isn't it? So why not add a mm or so to the thickness and give them more longevity on a charge?

And speaking of charging, Samsung is really behind in the fast charging game, compared to everyone but Apple and Google. The Korean company may be fine with this, as it may just be thinking of those competitors, but there are a lot of Chinese smartphone makers who now have much faster wired charging systems, some of them so fast that battery anxiety simply isn't a thing anymore when you use those phones. Don't get us wrong, the Note20 Ultra charges from zero to a hundred in under 90 minutes, but when other phones do the same in under 45 minutes (or even under 30), this is just a bad image.

Smoothness may be the best on any Samsung ever, but it's still not on par with other flagship devices from Oppo, Huawei, and Xiaomi. And that's obviously not going to annoy you if you switch to the Note20 Ultra from another Samsung device, but if you've used the competition, you'll be disappointed. And at this price, you shouldn't be.

So finally, let's address the pricing. The Note20 Ultra is cheaper now than it was when it launched, thankfully, but it's still an expensive flagship device, and that means that our judgement of it can't not be informed by the price point. Let's put it this way - if this phone cost $700, then it would be incredibly easy to recommend to anyone, even people who don't care for the S Pen, because you can of course just ignore it.

But it doesn't cost $700, at the moment it's over $900 even on eBay (and around €1,000 in Europe). Prices do jump around a lot, though, so don't take this as gospel - use our pricing page in specs to learn the current amounts. At this level, some of its omissions become glaring. We just can't excuse the 'good, but not on par with the competition' smoothness and battery life and battery charging speed, nor the display forcing you to choose between 120 Hz and full resolution.

You might, however. If these things aren't the most important to you, then the Galaxy Note20 Ultra is an otherwise amazing device. And if you are part of the S Pen crew, then it's basically the only recent flagship device that warrants buying, since the vanilla Note20 has so many compromises that we're amazed it was even launched.