Samsung Galaxy Note9 review

The video camera has everything

Much like the Galaxy S9+, the Note9 supports 4K and 1080p video recording at 60fps or 30 fps, and it can be captured in the widespread H.264 or in the new H.265 (HEVC) format. OIS is available all the time, and you can use digital video stabilization in all but the 4K/60 fps mode and 1440p 1:1, which remains a thing on recent Samsungs.

With the H.264 codec, the 4K@60fps videos are captured at 72Mbps bitrate (42Mbps in H.265), the 4K@30fps - 48Mbps (28Mbps in H.265), the 1080p@60fps - 28Mbps (16Mbps in H.265), and the 1080p@30fps - 14Mbps (8Mbps in H.265). The audio is always recorded in stereo at 256Kbps bitrate.

The videos captured in H.265 are virtually identical in quality to the ones recorded in H.264.

The 4K videos captured both at 60, and 30 fps are virtually identical in quality. They are very detailed and free of noise. The colors are great, and so is the contrast and white balance. There are no focus issues or compression artifacts. We continue to be impressed by the dynamic range.

The 1080p videos at both 30 and 60 fps also exhibit practically the same qualities. They are quite sharp, with plenty of detail, but other than that - they have the same essentials - great dynamic range, accurate colors and white balance, and high contrast.

The output from the telephoto camera is that little bit less sharp. Color saturation is a notch down too, and so is contrast. Additionally, here the 60fps modes come with distinct quality disadvantage. Overall, however, the zoomed-in videos are very pleasing, particularly the 30fps varieties.

Electronic stabilization works miracles on the Note9 in the modes where it's available (so not in 4K@60fps). It smooths out camera shake from walking and from handshake alike. If we have to complain about something, maybe the panning action is a bit artificial, but it could be us panning too fast. It's similarly capable on the telephoto camera, where its absence in 4K@60fps is less of an issue because you don't want to be shooting at 60fps on the telephoto cam anyway due to the lower quality.

Slow-mo videos

Samsung's improved its super slow-mo video recording further, and the Note9 can now capture twice as long clips - 0.4s vs. the 0.2, with the former only available in single-take mode. Auto and manual triggering are available, and in our experience Auto works excellently and takes a lot of the guess work out of the process. After capturing the videos you can edit them too - trimming's available and you can export and send slow-mo gifs too.

Super slow-mo videos are captured at 720p resolution at 960fps and a 0.4s slow-mo clip ends up being 12s when played back at 30fps. Here are a couple of slow-mo video samples.

Aside from the Super slo-mo at 720p/960fps, there's also regular non-Super slo-mo at 1080p/240fps. Only it's not available by default, you need to enable it in settings - clearly Samsung doesn't want it to distract from the headline feature.

The last stop is, of course, our Video compare tool where you can compare the Galaxy Note9's output against other phones we've tested. We've pre-selected the iPhone X and the Huawei P20 Pro, but a different set of devices is only a few clicks away.

Samsung Galaxy Note9 against the iPhone X and the Huawei P20 Pro