Samsung Galaxy Note 20 vs Note 20 Ultra | In-Depth Comparison & Review

A few months ago I

review

ed Samsung's s20 series line and with so many premium features we were curious to know what exactly would be left to improve with the Note series. The Galaxy Note series has traditionally incorporated the best that Samsung has to offer and with the new Note 20 Ultra that certainly seems to be the case, but with the regular Note 20, Samsung has taken numerous shortcuts to keep the cost down to the point where these two phones are very different and it's clearly not just about having two. of the same smartphone in different sizes, the

note

20 with all its shortcomings still costs a thousand dollars, a flagship smartphone that compromises in all areas except price, making one wonder how exactly this fits into the market current with so many best value options available at In this

review

we will cover all the new features in

depth

, explain all the differences between the two phones and find out which of them offers better value for money.

Let's take a look at the design first, it's not that much. The first thing you will notice is the difference in size but shape of the phones. The Note 20 Ultra is extremely square. A design that I know many of you love, but I personally prefer the more rounded style of the Note 20, which I think looks better and feels more comfortable. In hand, the

ultra

is only slightly larger than last year's Note 10 plus, but the regular Note 20 is significantly larger than the Note 10, so there's not really a small option this year. Many people will be delighted to see the power and volume buttons return. to the right side of the phones, a change that many people were unhappy with on last year's

note

10, to me this feels more natural and the buttons are placed in an easy to access position, the stylus has now been moved to the left side, so I think this design will suit left-handed users better and those of you who are right-handed and use a pinky to hold the phone may find yourself covering the speaker while holding it, but I don't think any of these changes are really going to be a problem, it's something you have to get used to, just like last year's phones, only the higher spec model has the hybrid SIM card tray, meaning only the Note 20 Ultra has expandable storage depending on your region.

There will also be restrictions on the base storage of these phones, as we customers are stuck with just 128 gigabytes for the regular Note 20. Half the storage of last year's Note 10 options, while the Ultra has a 512GB option, but only in mystic black. I'll also note the new color options that are much more muted and understated than last year's colorful aura glow model, but what I really like are the new satin finishes that are available for all three colors of the Note 20. I think this green Mystic is one of the best-looking phones we've seen this year, albeit a bit familiar, but unfortunately only the Mystic Bronze Note 20 Ultra has a satin finish, a color I'm personally not a big fan of, although I think the Ultra White The best thing is that the glossy finish doesn't look or feel as good as the satin finish on the Note 20.

Google did something similar with the Pixel 4 last year and I really wish this satin finish and especially all the storage options were available across the board, but the biggest talking point by far is the material options, because Samsung's flagship 1000 Note 20 is made of plastic. This was perhaps the biggest surprise of Samsung's announcement and, understandably, a lot of people are quite angry about this - even the front screen has been downgraded to Gorilla Glass. 5 but swapping out the rear glass panel for cheaper plastic is a harder pill to swallow. However, I must admit that due to the satin texture the phone still feels great in the hand and of course the plastic is lighter and less likely to break. but I think a phone this expensive deserves to be made with more premium materials, so let me know in the comments if this would be a deal breaker for you.

The

ultra

, on the other hand, is made of the new Gorilla Glass Victus, the strongest Gorilla Glass yet. the metal frame was eventually upgraded to stainless steel, although

samsung

tells me the note 20 also has this, but the ultra has a much more premium build quality across the board, the new note 20s are more easily distinguished by their new camera modules and now that I've gotten used to these large rectangular designs, I actually think they look quite good, however the camera bump on the ultra is very thick, almost comically thick in fact, so there are practical implications of a camera bump so thick that it goes beyond aesthetics, for example, getting trapped.

Your jeans pocket collects dust and, in some cases, prevents your phone from lying flat against a wireless charger. This is all solved by using a phone case of course, as I'm sure most of you will be, but I still don't think that purchasing an additional accessory is always a great justification for design flaws and I would personally choose a thicker phone with a bigger battery and a nice, flush camera lens any day of the week. The other point about using a phone case is that this can also offset any potential issues with the Note 20's build materials and I think it's fair to ask if it matters that your phone is made of plastic if you put it inside anyway. of a case, so perhaps it's a minor defense for the Note 20.

Last year's models, the Note 20 Ultra, have a curved screen, so it's still possible to accidentally touch the screen. However, the Note 20's screen is completely flat, but as a consequence it can't achieve the ultra-thin bezels of the Ultra. Personally, I always prefer a flat screen and I think the practical benefits outweigh the slight aesthetic differences, as both phones offer an almost full-screen design, the hole-punch also returns from last year, but you'll notice it's smaller and more discreet on the ultra Although these cameras have the same specifications, we also have the same biometrics, including Samsung's face unlock and ultrasonic fingerprint scanner.

They are well placed and as fast and reliable as any fingerprint scanner. Still, it has problems with not registering, which can be annoying and is not as reliable or convenient as a secure face unlock method like on an iPhone or a Pixel 4. Those of you who are familiar with my videos will know how much I love those systems, but again, in this pandemic era that we find ourselves living in for a long time. For many people, the fingerprint scanner is the best biometric system we have because face unlock systems simply don't work when you're wearing a mask.

In terms of specs, the display is another area where the Ultra is superior to the regular Note 20. ultra has a 6.9-inch 1440p display with a 120hz refresh rate, while the note 20 has only a 1080p 60hz panel with a lower pixel density, only the ultra gets a contrast ratio Super high and new 1500 nits of maximum brightness, making HDR content much better. and improved viewing in bright conditions Samsung declined to provide exact specifications for the Note 20, but suffice it to say that the Ultra is noticeably brighter in everyday use and especially when viewing content outdoors, don't get me wrong, the screen The Note 20 is still bright and colorful and both are great devices for consuming multimedia content, it's just that a phone at this price that carries Samsung's high-end node name feels underwhelming with the screen specs it has, some even lower than last year's models, the ultra on.

The other side is equipped with pretty much the best you can get and this is clearly one of the best looking displays out there, it's not just the stunning color or sharpness that justifies the credit, it's really the high refresh rate that It makes this screen great to use and giving you a much better experience compared to using the normal Note 20. There's probably no good reason for a Note 10 user to update their phone, but if a high refresh rate existed, it would be the only drawback. is that this affects battery life even though the refresh rate is adaptive and you cannot have quad hd plus resolution and 120 hertz at the same time.

I know some people were hoping this would come later with software updates, but I have the s20 ultra here and it doesn't support it yet, so if you're using the high refresh rate it looks like you'll be stuck at 1080p again, passing now to the cameras, the Note 20 has essentially the same camera setup as the s20 with matching specs and very similar performance, but with the Note 20 Ultra Samsung is clearly learning from the mistakes made with the S20 Ultra by matching the lens 108-megapixel main sensor with a new laser autofocus and get rid of the hype and disappointing.

Tricks like 100x Space Zoom There's an all-new telephoto lens that uses periscope technology to achieve five times optical zoom and a more sensitive 50x maximum zoom The camera performance of both phones is fantastic, quite similar to the s20 and s20 plus, but I noticed some overall improvements in image quality such as dynamic range compared to the previous Note series, in typical Samsung fashion the cameras still try to over-sharpen and increase contrast, which some will argue which keeps these phones behind the iPhone. o Pixel color accuracy is still often an issue, especially on the Note 20, and the magenta hue you can see in the sky here isn't as real as what you can see with the iPhone, but image processing Samsung's aggressiveness often works on its They also favor and the vibrancy and brightness make the photos really pop on the screen and clearly these triple lens camera setups make the Notes much more versatile compared to the Pixel 4. the Ultra-wide megapixel count actually drops from the Note 10 to 16 and 12.

But we've seen before that megapixel count isn't everything and, in fact, improvements to the sensor should provide benefits for capturing light and color. For most of the time, the two phones performed very similarly and in a blind test I think it would be difficult to achieve that. distinguish them, which is notable given how different the main sensors actually are. What I noticed when using these phones side by side were some of the familiar drawbacks of having a large main sensor and the ultra suffered from slower autofocus and slower capture time compared to the regular Note 20. The biggest The problem I found was with close-up subjects and this is an area where you'll be able to tell the cameras apart as the ultra's huge main sensor captures a very shallow plane of focus and you can see how much more of this plant is in focus on the regular Note 20. .

However, Samsung has managed to fix the terrible focus-seeking issues plaguing the s20 ultra. This was a big problem that the s20 ultra still suffers from today and it seems to be changing time. The flight camera that, let's face it, no one was using for this new laser autofocus sensor has made a huge improvement. Focusing isn't as fast as on the regular Note 20, but the hunting issues are gone, so you just have to be a little more patient. Low-light performance has also improved significantly not only from the Note 10s but even from the S20 series. In fact, the low-light performance is so good that I only really needed to switch to night mode in extremely dark conditions where phones perform very well. job of exposing the scene, I often found that the main photo mode took more attractive images than the night mode, as you can capture the true darkness of the real-life scene.

The main difference I noticed between the two phones was that the ultra suffered less with noise, especially when using main photography mode compared to night mode, but what surprised me most was how much Samsung has reduced overprocessing than the phones Galaxy often suffer when capturing images that were sometimes more realistic than the Pixel 4 and iPhone 11 Pro. The phones are generally considered to have the best night performance, but in these photos that do not reach the galaxies, the notes do not They're perfect and have a tendency to over-brighten the shadows, like on last year's Note 10, but the improvements in overall low-light performance are very impressive now, in the previous images the ultra was using image grouping.pixels to produce 12 megapixel photos with the normal Note 20 shots, so to take advantage of the main sensor's full 108 megapixels you actually need to enable this in a separate mode just as we saw with the s20 ultra which this mode seems to crush black levels giving photos an unnatural contrast, plus you have to crop quite a bit and start looking at pixels before you notice a higher resolution, so I still don't think this mode is worth it. slow capture time and large file sizes, the regular note 20 also has a sort of higher resolution mode using the 64 megapixel telephoto lens, just like the s20, as we found with the s20, although there is no substantial difference with the normal mode nor compared to the ultra so, again, I wouldn't say this is a huge benefit over the normal note where the ultra really comes ahead, although it is with zoom photography and the switch to telephoto lenses, These phones will default to their maximum optical ranges of three times hybrid absorption on the note 20 and five times optical on the ultra, even at these lower zoom levels the ultra performs better, but the benefits of that periscopic lens really they become clear at 10x and beyond, both phones use digital zoom along with their optical capabilities, but you can see how much For more details, the ultra is capable of keeping the Note 20 at a maximum of 30x, while the ultra can reach 50x and while both phones struggle at their maximum zoom levels, I think the main takeaway from this is how much better the ultra performs with zoom photography.

Personally, I rarely use a camera zoom and the Note 20's 30x zoom is enough for me, so with the phone's fastest capture time and best close-up performance, I think the Note 20 actually has the more practical camera of the two, the video quality has suffered. It even matches the specs of the s20 series and I have taken these walking videos so you can see how good the stability is even without super stable mode activated. Video is still behind the iPhone as we expected, but it's better than on any previous Samsung device. And I think, like any Android device on the market today, the phones struggle more in low light and introduce a lot of noise into the image, as we've seen in previous models.

However, I noticed that the ultra works much better here. so there seems to be an overall improvement in low light performance with the ultra compared to the regular model, just like the s20 series, these phones can record in 8k at 24 frames per second, it's better on the note 20 ultra than on the s20 ultra. thanks to the new laser autofocus, but that doesn't change the fact that the ak footage is still quite choppy, takes up a lot of storage on your device, and anyway, if you actually own an 8k screen to watch it again, you'll probably not be more useful.

Features come to pro video mode, including zoom controls and the option to select the microphone source, even from the device via USBC or even from a connected Bluetooth device, so at least these are clearly two of the most versatile video recording phones on the market. As for the front cameras, both are identical and, in fact, have exactly the same specifications as last year's Note 10 and this year's S20, which offers practically the same performance as before. Phones are still desperate to soften skin tones and still make you jump. through hoops to disable all those beauty features, but overall the selfie camera is pretty good and produces sharp, bright images.

The live focus mode provides a nice blurred background and does a decent job of separating your subject from it, but just like we saw last year. cameras sometimes have issues with clipping around hair and other fiddly features, the rear cameras do a much better job with the live focus effect and often produce a near-perfect crop, so while neither of these phones came equipped with last year's deep vision camera. 10 plus I don't think this is a feature that is lost when cropping. I noticed that the Note 20's images were actually sharper than the ultras, which is probably due to the fact that it shoots the live focus images with its higher resolution telephoto lens. lens while the ultra uses the larger main sensor and therefore produces a softer image, but again there isn't a huge difference unless you're really looking for it.

Front-facing video has also been improved and both phones now come with 4k60 recording straight out of the box which was only available for last year's models via software updates, but just as we saw with the rear cameras, it's the stability that It really seems to have improved, so overall the video quality of this year's node models is the best we've seen. from

samsung

so far, but moving on from the cameras, no flagship smartphone would be complete without the latest performance specs and the phones include the new snapdragon 865 plus and exynos 990 processors, this means that the US snapdragon models are even up to date compared to the s20 series. but the international Exynos models are not and I will return to this issue later, the Note 20 has 8 gigabytes of RAM compared to 12 for the Ultra.

So again, the regular Note doesn't have the same top-notch specs and as we saw above, the base storage is halved compared to last year's phones. Both models of course come with 5g which may be important for those of you who have access to it and there is even a 4g version of the note 20 available in some regions as Both phones feel very fast and snappy to use but It's mainly the fluidity of the Ultra's 120 hertz panel that makes it feel like a faster phone, not just compared to last year's models but even compared to its Note 20 sibling with its huge screens.

They are designed for productivity and give you a huge screen to work on, so it's good to see them with the power needed for even the most demanding tasks, such as multitasking editing and gaming, this of course is made easier with the stylus that comes with this year. a bunch of new software improvements and features including new air gestures, better handwriting recognition, but especially a reduction in latency thanks to the ultra's high screen refresh rate, this was reduced from 45 milliseconds to just nine, on par with the performance of the market-leading stylus, the regular note. The 20's stylus latency only drops to 26 milliseconds, and while this is still an improvement over the previous Note series, it doesn't feel as smooth as it does on the Ultra.

Samsung Notes has a ton of new features for annotations, PDF import, and syncing with other platforms. like microsoft's powerpoint and now it's really one of the best notes apps out there, so for those of you who use the stylus frequently, this year's issue 20 has some of the best stylus improvements we've ever seen. we have seen in years and this really helps to highlight the benefit of getting a note over another smartphone like an s20 an important aspect of a phone's performance is battery life and samsung has increased the phone's batteries to 4300 and 4500 milliamps hour respectively, pushing these phones to the maximum, you will still be able to achieve it. a full day and I was averaging at least six hours of screen time, but as I mentioned above, the high refresh rate of the ultra really takes its toll and the regular Note 20 was giving me much better battery performance just by draining the battery with a continuous video loop. which isn't really a problem, the high refresh rate left me with over 20 batteries left on the note 20 when the ultra's battery died, luckily if you need to recharge the phone you can do it in just over an hour with the 25 watts included.

Fast chargers neither phone supports the 45 watt charging of the Note 10 plus, but honestly there is no significant difference in charging time compared to 25 watt charges, plus you needed to purchase this charger separately for the Note 10 plus, so this isn't really In my opinion, fast wireless charging and reverse wireless charging are also back from last year, so the phones are pretty versatile when it comes to charging, but I want to come back to this topic of the different processors within these phones because there is a significant gap. in performance between the US versions of snapdragon and the international models exymos and there really shouldn't be any real world tests have consistently shown a significant increase in performance for snapdragon models in some cases up to 20 and we now know from videos like the teardown from zach that the phones even have different internal components like cooling systems, the exynos models are much more likely to overheat and thermally throttle and I can certainly testify from my use that both the note20 and ultra get very hot even under light loads, The Snapdragon's performance boost has even been shown to produce better photos and provide a longer battery life compared to the Exynos models and remember they are supposed to be the exact same phone.

The reason this is so unfair is because many people will receive a phone with little respect and performance just because. They live in the world and Samsung should be much more transparent about this. Let's not forget that Samsung pretends that the US and international models are the same phone, market them the same, and, monetary differences aside, charge the same prices. but as far as I'm concerned, two phones that have different internal components that work differently are not the same phone. You get more storage on the international models than the US models, but to me this doesn't make up for the performance loss plus this.

Another difference is simply adding to the problem that Samsung doesn't sell the same phones. This topic could really be discussed in a completely separate video, but the sad reality is that you will get a much better deal if you live in the US and you would have every right to be upset about this unfair treatment as a customer. I wouldn't blame anyone who has decided to stop buying a Samsung phone until this imbalance is fixed. So if you buy one of these two phones, I think there's only one you should even consider: It's not so much that the Note 20 isn't an improvement over the Note 10.

It's just that the upgrade wouldn't be worth it, really just There are minor tweaks and even some downgrades compared to the Note 10 plus. and you generally miss out on the exciting new features the ultra has just to recap, the note 20 has a lower resolution screen that doesn't get the higher refresh rate, it doesn't have telescopic zoom lenses, it has less ram, it doesn't have expandable storage and it's a phone. made of plastic sitting next to its superior ultra brother, you can't help but notice all these drawbacks and maybe that was Samsung's point, maybe the ultra is the phone they really want to sell, but it means the note 20 is a phone which I just can't recommend while sitting there is a thousand dollar starting price, if you are looking to save costs then I would recommend something that offers better value for your money such as one of the S20s or if you need the S Pen then one.

From last year's note 10 to the ultra, this really is a fantastic phone in every way that I could recommend even if you end up with one of the exynos models, but with the main caveat that you need to be someone who gets the most out of the s pen and if not you should save 300 and go for the very similar s20 plus again. There's no need to upgrade from a Note 10 or 10 Plus, but Note enthusiasts can enjoy the Ultra's ultra-low, high refresh rate display. latency s pen, but let me know which of these phones you are thinking of buying.

The big difference between the US and international models is stopping you from buying a Samsung phone this year, and if so, what other phones are you thinking about buying? Thank you. Too much to look at and I'll see you all in the next one.