The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra: A Hands-On Review

We recently had the opportunity to get our hands on the brand new Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, and we're excited to share our initial impressions with you. The Note 20 Ultra is the latest flagship device from Samsung, offering a range of impressive features and upgrades over its predecessor.

One of the standout features of the Note 20 Ultra is its camera system. The phone boasts three cameras, including two 12-megapixel ultra-wide angle and wide-angle cameras, as well as a 64-megapixel telephoto camera. This allows for some incredibly detailed photos and impressive zoom capabilities. The Note 20 Ultra also has a 5x optical zoom with up to 50x using Samsung's Super Resolution Zoom technology.

In comparison, the standard Note 20 has a hybrid 3x optical zoom with up to 30x Super Resolution Zoom. While this is still an impressive feature set, it can't quite match the capabilities of its ultra version. Both phones, however, are very capable video cameras, able to capture up to 8K video at up to 24 frames per second and offer a Pro Video mode for more advanced shooters.

Another key feature of the Note 20 Ultra is its S Pen stylus. Samsung has optimized the platform to reduce latency by about 40%, allowing for a more responsive experience. The S Pen feels just like the one included with the Note 10, with a similar button in the middle and a sleek design that fits comfortably in the hand. We were impressed with the buttery smooth response time of the S Pen when used on the phone.

The S Pen also offers some new features, including Air Gestures, which allow you to control the phone from a distance using your hand movements. This is perfect for presentations or other situations where you need to interact with the phone without physically touching it. Additionally, there's support for annotating PDFs and syncing notes with Microsoft Outlook for reminders and other tasks.

The Note 20 Ultra also supports DeX (Desktop Experience) wirelessly via Miracast devices, allowing you to cast your desktop experience to a larger display and use your keyboard and mouse on the phone. This is a great feature for productivity enthusiasts who want to get more work done on their device.

Another new feature of the Note 20 Ultra is its support for Ultra Wideband (UWB) wireless technology. UWB allows for directional wireless communication, which means you can transfer files wirelessly just by pointing two devices at each other. Samsung notes that new features will be coming via UWP as well, such as using your phone as a wireless key to unlock doors or start cars.

Finally, we have to talk about performance. The Note 20 Ultra is powered by the same Snapdragon 865+ processor as the Asus Rog Phone 3, which is one of the fastest Android devices available today. We were impressed with the smooth performance and responsiveness of the phone in our short time with it.

One key difference between the two phones is their battery size, with the Note 20 Ultra having a larger 4,500mAh battery compared to the standard Note 20's 3,300mAh.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone marcoshpeter for hot hardware behind the camera here to show you what is inside this box i'm sure you can tell from that branding that we have the brand new samsung galaxy note 20 ultra in hand what do you say we get this box open and take a look at what's inside inside the galaxy note ultra box we have this little packet here with a sim tray tool and a little bit of documentation inside and of course we have the phone itself right here we'll get to that in just a second this is the mystic bronze color and underneath we have the samsung quick charger and of course a usbc cable here this does not appear to be a full retail box so no additional accessories but we figured you wanted to see what's inside the box anyway okay so here she is this is the brand new galaxy note 20 ultra in mystic bronze you can see the color right on the back the phone is available in three colors mystic white mystic black and bronze the note 20 non-ultra the smaller version is also available in three colors there's this bronze a green and a gray before we take a quick tour of the note 20 ultra we should probably get some specs out of the way first so both the note 20 ultra and the galaxy note 20 are built around qualcomm's snapdragon 865 plus 5g mobile platform now the 865 plus is a slightly goosed up version of the 865 used in basically every other flagship released earlier this year it has 10 higher gpu and cpu clocks to boost performance by about 10 now this particular galaxy note 20 ultra is packing 12 gigabytes of lp ddr5 ram with 512 gigabytes of storage there will also be a 128 gig model available but we should note that storage is expandable via microsd card through this slot right here the standard note 20 the smaller version has eight gigabytes of ram and 128 gigs of storage and it is not expandable so there are obviously a few other differences between the note 20 ultra and note 20 first of which is obviously the display size so the note 20 ultra has a 6.9 inch oled display with a native resolution of 3088 by 1440 i should mention that when you're running at full res the refresh rate is 60 hertz but if you drop it to full hd you get up to 120 hertz with dynamic refresh technology where it'll adjust the refresh rate depending on the application the note 20 has a 6.7 inch display with a slightly lower 2400 by 1080 resolution that one is only 60 hertz now on the note 20 the screen is also perfectly flat the note 20 ultra has the curved edges that samsung's known for on their flagship phones in terms of its physical dimensions the note 20 ultra is only slightly taller than the note 10 plus this is the note 10 plus right in front here the actual dimensions uh measure in at 164.8 millimeters by 77.2 millimeters by only eight point one millimeters thick and it weighs in at two hundred and eight grams now that's only slightly larger than the note 20. the vanilla note 20 has a 161.6 millimeter length here 75.2 millimeters wide and it's slightly thicker at 8.3 millimeters but it's lighter at 192 grams both phones however have ip68 water and dust resistance if we take a quick tour around the phone you'll notice the volume rocker and power slash lock button right here on the right side on the bottom we have the s pen port now on the left side of the phone with a speaker port usb c port and a microphone port as well the left side of the phone is completely bare nice and smooth there and on the top we have another microphone port and the combination sim micro sd tray so both of the new note 20s have the same selfie camera and a little punch out at the top of the display this is a 10 megapixel selfie camera with an f 2.2 aperture in 80 degree field of view and both of the phones also have triple camera arrays on the back but the setups are very different so the note 20 ultra has a 12 megapixel ultra wide angle camera with an f 2.2 aperture and 120 degree field of view it has a 12 megapixel telephoto camera with an f 3 aperture and 20 degree field of view and also a 108 megapixel wide angle camera with f 1.8 aperture and 79 degree field of view now that's using a one slash 1.33 inch image sensor and it has phase detect autofocus optical image stabilization and a new laser autofocus system for faster more accurate focusing so the regular note 20 also has three cameras and two of them are 12 megapixels uh the ultra wide angle and the wide angle camera are both 12 megapixels as well but the telephoto camera on the standard note 20 is 64 megapixels now the two phones differ in how they can zoom as well the note 20 ultra you see here has a 5x optical zoom with up to 50x using samsung's super resolution zoom the regular note 20 has a hybrid 3x optical zoom with up to 30x super resolution zoom the note 20 and note 20 ultra are both very capable video cameras as well both phones can capture up to 8k video at up to 24 frames per second and there's also a pro video mode where you can basically control any aspect of the camera shutter speed iso aperture white balance you can tweak it all to your liking now of course we can't cover a galaxy note without talking about the s pen samsung tucked the s pen away right here on the left hand side of the note 20 ultra pop out the s pen here comes your menu let's start a brand new note right here now in terms of its size and shape the s pen in the note 20 ultra feels just like the one included with the note 10 you have the same button right there in the middle but samsung has optimized the platform to reduce latency by about forty percent samsung's claiming a nine millisecond response time when using the s pen on the note 20 and i will say when you're doodling or drawing notes or whatever it is buttery smooth and reacts almost instantly there will also be some new air gestures coming so you can use the s pen to control the note 20 ultra say you're giving a presentation you can use the s pen from you know a distance away from the phone and control it and you also now have the ability to annotate pdfs and through deeper software integration with microsoft you also have note syncing and syncing with outlook for reminders and things like that as well now i don't have it set up to show it to you in action but i should talk about some updates to samsung's dex a desktop experience as well the note 20 and note 20 ultra support decks wirelessly now to miracast devices you can cast the desktop experience to a larger display and use your keyboard and mouse on the phone you can also use the phone as a touchpad and control what's being cast up to the larger display now there's another new feature available in the note 20s that i can't quite show you either both of the phones support ultra wideband or uwb wireless technology now uwb is a directional wireless technology that will let you say transfer files wirelessly just by pointing two devices at each other to compatible devices samsung notes that new features will be coming via uwp as well for example you may be able to use the phone as a wireless key to say get in a building or even maybe start your car so we're sure many of you are curious about performance as well unfortunately this is not a full review we can't publish our full review just yet but if you've been buy hot hardware and seen our review of say the asus rog phone 3 you know the snapdragon 865 plus is super fast it's the fastest platform available for android today and i can say tooling around on the note 20. it is buttery smooth it's super fast the phone has a ton of ram and fast storage you know and a really nice screen so the experience has been really good in the short time i've had it we can't show photo samples just yet or talk battery life either but that's coming in our full review i promise and since i just mentioned the batteries i should point out another difference between the note 20 ultra and the note 20. obviously the slightly larger note 20 also has a bigger battery so 4 500 milliamp hour battery in the note 20 ultra and a 4300 milliamp hour battery in the note 20. so i think i'm gonna wrap things up right there we hope you've enjoyed this quick hands-on look at the brand new samsung galaxy note 20 ultra we will have a full review posted shortly with benchmarks and battery life and image and video samples we promise just come by the site and check that out as soon as the embargo lifts but for now we hope you've enjoyed this quick look once again this is marco chapetta for hot hardware if you like this video please like and subscribe and tick that reminder bell so you know when we posted a new video or have gone live with our latest episode of our two and a half geeks podcast thanks for stopping byhello everyone marcoshpeter for hot hardware behind the camera here to show you what is inside this box i'm sure you can tell from that branding that we have the brand new samsung galaxy note 20 ultra in hand what do you say we get this box open and take a look at what's inside inside the galaxy note ultra box we have this little packet here with a sim tray tool and a little bit of documentation inside and of course we have the phone itself right here we'll get to that in just a second this is the mystic bronze color and underneath we have the samsung quick charger and of course a usbc cable here this does not appear to be a full retail box so no additional accessories but we figured you wanted to see what's inside the box anyway okay so here she is this is the brand new galaxy note 20 ultra in mystic bronze you can see the color right on the back the phone is available in three colors mystic white mystic black and bronze the note 20 non-ultra the smaller version is also available in three colors there's this bronze a green and a gray before we take a quick tour of the note 20 ultra we should probably get some specs out of the way first so both the note 20 ultra and the galaxy note 20 are built around qualcomm's snapdragon 865 plus 5g mobile platform now the 865 plus is a slightly goosed up version of the 865 used in basically every other flagship released earlier this year it has 10 higher gpu and cpu clocks to boost performance by about 10 now this particular galaxy note 20 ultra is packing 12 gigabytes of lp ddr5 ram with 512 gigabytes of storage there will also be a 128 gig model available but we should note that storage is expandable via microsd card through this slot right here the standard note 20 the smaller version has eight gigabytes of ram and 128 gigs of storage and it is not expandable so there are obviously a few other differences between the note 20 ultra and note 20 first of which is obviously the display size so the note 20 ultra has a 6.9 inch oled display with a native resolution of 3088 by 1440 i should mention that when you're running at full res the refresh rate is 60 hertz but if you drop it to full hd you get up to 120 hertz with dynamic refresh technology where it'll adjust the refresh rate depending on the application the note 20 has a 6.7 inch display with a slightly lower 2400 by 1080 resolution that one is only 60 hertz now on the note 20 the screen is also perfectly flat the note 20 ultra has the curved edges that samsung's known for on their flagship phones in terms of its physical dimensions the note 20 ultra is only slightly taller than the note 10 plus this is the note 10 plus right in front here the actual dimensions uh measure in at 164.8 millimeters by 77.2 millimeters by only eight point one millimeters thick and it weighs in at two hundred and eight grams now that's only slightly larger than the note 20. the vanilla note 20 has a 161.6 millimeter length here 75.2 millimeters wide and it's slightly thicker at 8.3 millimeters but it's lighter at 192 grams both phones however have ip68 water and dust resistance if we take a quick tour around the phone you'll notice the volume rocker and power slash lock button right here on the right side on the bottom we have the s pen port now on the left side of the phone with a speaker port usb c port and a microphone port as well the left side of the phone is completely bare nice and smooth there and on the top we have another microphone port and the combination sim micro sd tray so both of the new note 20s have the same selfie camera and a little punch out at the top of the display this is a 10 megapixel selfie camera with an f 2.2 aperture in 80 degree field of view and both of the phones also have triple camera arrays on the back but the setups are very different so the note 20 ultra has a 12 megapixel ultra wide angle camera with an f 2.2 aperture and 120 degree field of view it has a 12 megapixel telephoto camera with an f 3 aperture and 20 degree field of view and also a 108 megapixel wide angle camera with f 1.8 aperture and 79 degree field of view now that's using a one slash 1.33 inch image sensor and it has phase detect autofocus optical image stabilization and a new laser autofocus system for faster more accurate focusing so the regular note 20 also has three cameras and two of them are 12 megapixels uh the ultra wide angle and the wide angle camera are both 12 megapixels as well but the telephoto camera on the standard note 20 is 64 megapixels now the two phones differ in how they can zoom as well the note 20 ultra you see here has a 5x optical zoom with up to 50x using samsung's super resolution zoom the regular note 20 has a hybrid 3x optical zoom with up to 30x super resolution zoom the note 20 and note 20 ultra are both very capable video cameras as well both phones can capture up to 8k video at up to 24 frames per second and there's also a pro video mode where you can basically control any aspect of the camera shutter speed iso aperture white balance you can tweak it all to your liking now of course we can't cover a galaxy note without talking about the s pen samsung tucked the s pen away right here on the left hand side of the note 20 ultra pop out the s pen here comes your menu let's start a brand new note right here now in terms of its size and shape the s pen in the note 20 ultra feels just like the one included with the note 10 you have the same button right there in the middle but samsung has optimized the platform to reduce latency by about forty percent samsung's claiming a nine millisecond response time when using the s pen on the note 20 and i will say when you're doodling or drawing notes or whatever it is buttery smooth and reacts almost instantly there will also be some new air gestures coming so you can use the s pen to control the note 20 ultra say you're giving a presentation you can use the s pen from you know a distance away from the phone and control it and you also now have the ability to annotate pdfs and through deeper software integration with microsoft you also have note syncing and syncing with outlook for reminders and things like that as well now i don't have it set up to show it to you in action but i should talk about some updates to samsung's dex a desktop experience as well the note 20 and note 20 ultra support decks wirelessly now to miracast devices you can cast the desktop experience to a larger display and use your keyboard and mouse on the phone you can also use the phone as a touchpad and control what's being cast up to the larger display now there's another new feature available in the note 20s that i can't quite show you either both of the phones support ultra wideband or uwb wireless technology now uwb is a directional wireless technology that will let you say transfer files wirelessly just by pointing two devices at each other to compatible devices samsung notes that new features will be coming via uwp as well for example you may be able to use the phone as a wireless key to say get in a building or even maybe start your car so we're sure many of you are curious about performance as well unfortunately this is not a full review we can't publish our full review just yet but if you've been buy hot hardware and seen our review of say the asus rog phone 3 you know the snapdragon 865 plus is super fast it's the fastest platform available for android today and i can say tooling around on the note 20. it is buttery smooth it's super fast the phone has a ton of ram and fast storage you know and a really nice screen so the experience has been really good in the short time i've had it we can't show photo samples just yet or talk battery life either but that's coming in our full review i promise and since i just mentioned the batteries i should point out another difference between the note 20 ultra and the note 20. obviously the slightly larger note 20 also has a bigger battery so 4 500 milliamp hour battery in the note 20 ultra and a 4300 milliamp hour battery in the note 20. so i think i'm gonna wrap things up right there we hope you've enjoyed this quick hands-on look at the brand new samsung galaxy note 20 ultra we will have a full review posted shortly with benchmarks and battery life and image and video samples we promise just come by the site and check that out as soon as the embargo lifts but for now we hope you've enjoyed this quick look once again this is marco chapetta for hot hardware if you like this video please like and subscribe and tick that reminder bell so you know when we posted a new video or have gone live with our latest episode of our two and a half geeks podcast thanks for stopping by\n"