Samsung Galaxy Note 20 review

Where to buy

Samsung sent through a review model of the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 at the same time as its bigger and costlier sibling, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Typically with these kinds of model families, the lower cost model is rife with compromises in an effort to upsell you to the theoretically "better" model.

That's not what's happened with the Galaxy Note 20 in my estimation.

Samsung's smaller Note 20 might seem like a question of compromises, but when you consider the cost saving and weigh up the fact that they run almost identically in terms of raw processing power and camera quality, the Note 20 pretty quickly becomes the best handset of Samsung's current lineup for most users.

Where Note phones over the years have tended to offer just incremental bumps over that year's Galaxy S series phones, the Note 20 really steps it up, delivering Samsung's best phone in years if you're after a premium device. Its battery life isn't right up there with the best of them, and the serious challenge posed by really good mid-range phones is a definite thinking point, but if you want to play in the premium end of the Android smartphone pool, the Galaxy Note 20 is the phone to buy.

Design

Design

• 6.7 Super AMOLED display
• Minimal camera bump
• Fast in-display fingerprint reader
• Three colour choices with silly names
• Where's my 120Hz, Samsung?

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Note 20's design

  When Samsung launched the Galaxy Note 10 range last year, it was the first time the South Korean manufacturer contemplated a "smaller" Galaxy Note phone. Smaller here is quite relative, however, but Note phones were the first "phablets" with larger displays than regular phones at the time.

  The Galaxy Note 20 features a 6.7-inch 2,400x1,080 pixel Super AMOLED display. If you're looking for the one area where the Note 20 definitely does lag behind the Note 20 Ultra, it's in the display, because the larger Ultra not only packs in a 6.9-inch 3,088x1,440 pixel Dynamic AMOLED display, it also offers a 120Hz refresh rate to boot, something that's noticeably absent from the Note 20 model. However, there's a tradeoff with the Ultra, because that full fat resolution doesn't support 120Hz, so you actually have to drop it to a resolution that's marginally lower than that of the Note 20 in order to take advantage of it.

  Which is not to say that I didn't miss the fluidity of 120Hz in some situations with the Galaxy Note 20, but it's definitely a nice-to-have rather than a glaring omission in this case. I generally found the slightly slimmer frame of the Galaxy Note 20 a lot easier to manage than the bulk of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra as well. The Galaxy Note 20 measures in at 161.6x75.2x8.3mm and 192 grams, which used to denote a massive phone but these days almost feels regular-sized.

  The Galaxy Note 20's controls sit on the right-hand side, with volume and a multi-function side button that can be configured to open apps, the camera, invoke Samsung's virtual assistant Bixby or act as a regular power button. Samsung chooses Bixby as the default long press action, and it was one of the first things I disabled. Sorry, Samsung, but Bixby sits as a distinct third-at-best in terms of virtual phone assistants unless you're totally invested in the Samsung ecosystem of devices.

  

  As with most recent Samsung flagships, there's no rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, with Samsung instead packing in an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor into the front of the display. While in-display fingerprint sensors have become far more common in recent times, most makers ship with cheaper optical readers that have highly variable pickup rates. Samsung's ultrasonic sensors are best in class, and you really do notice that when using the Galaxy Note 20. I've not had it miss a fingerprint read yet during my entire testing time, which is very pleasing.

  The Galaxy Note 20 ships in three colour variants in Australia. You can choose from Mystic Grey, Mystic Green or Mystic Bronze. Why are they Mystic? It's a mystery, really, but if I had to guess, I'd say that somebody at Samsung's marketing department thought that silly name suffixes might help to sell phones.

  What you're really looking at here is grey, green or what's basically Samsung's take on rose gold finishes. My review model of the Note 20 was the Mystic Grey model, and while it didn't make me feel like Doctor Strange all that much, it's a pleasant light tone that curves nicely around the body of the phone. The Mystic Bronze is of course the extrovert's choice if you like something with a far more metallic tinge to it.

  A Galaxy Note wouldn't be a Galaxy Note without Samsung's iconic S-Pen on board, and you'll find that at the base of the Note 20. Samsung has utterly owned and defined this category ever since it invented it with the first generation Galaxy Note, although there's not much change here in design terms that you'll easily pick.

  

  The Note 20 itself is IP68 rated for water resistance, which is expected on premium flagship phones, although like its competition, that water resistance isn't covered by an actual warranty if you do get water damage to the phone. I chucked the Note 20 into a jug for 10 minutes because I had the luxury of testing a device that Samsung owned, but it's not exactly advisable behaviour, even in an age where you should be keeping your phone as clean as possible.

Camera

Camera

• Good all round camera performance
• Space Zoom overstretches its ability
• Single Take is great for quick creative shots
• Low light performance isn't as good as the Note 20 Ultra 5G

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Note 20's cameras

  The Galaxy Note 20's smaller camera bump takes a very different approach to that of the bigger Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G. Where that phone is sold based on its primary 108MP sensor, the primary wide sensor on the Note 20 is a 12MP f/1.8 lens, with a secondary 12MP f/2.2 120' ultra wide sensor and 64MP 3x optical zoom f/2.0 sensor to use. You don't get the laser autofocus feature of the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra either, and all of that is very much in line with the way that the "lesser" models in phone ranges tend to work, because the clear intent here is to tempt you to spend more on the more "capable" model.

  However, in real world use, the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 reveals itself to be a very capable camera phone in its own right. For everyday shots it delivers crisp and clear pictures across all 3 lenses, and even the lack of laser autofocus isn't that noticeable when shooting side by side with the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G.

  If you're happy to let Samsung's AI take controls, you've got access to the "Single Take" feature that fires off all the lenses for up to 10 seconds to capture a variety of video and still images with filters and cropping pre-applied. It's a feature Samsung introduced with the Galaxy S20 range earlier in the year, and it's a good match if you're not so confident with your own shot-taking prowess.

  

  For the S20 phones there was a strong tendency to shoot more video than stills, but that seems to have been toned down with a cleaner 50/50 split between stills and video content. I'd still love it if I could choose my own still and video ratio for Single Take, because there are absolutely times when what you want is a still shot or just video.

  The 64MP telephoto lens gives the Galaxy Note 20 more megapixels to play with than the bigger Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, but it's limited in pure optical terms to 3x actual zoom. Like the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, you get the "Space Zoom" feature that first saw light of day on the S20 phones, using a hybrid camera plus digital approach to deliver up to 30x zoom capabilities.

  Just because a phone has a capability doesn't mean that it can deliver pleasing results. To test this out, I went to a nearby lookout to get a comparative view of how the Galaxy Note 20's ultrawide, wide and zoom cameras could cope in good light conditions.

  As with most landscape shots, ultrawide is pretty much always where you want to be to take in the most of a shot:

  

  The wide lens still delivers a good shot:

  

  The optical 3x zoom is solid, although of course at this range you don't get much out of it in terms of additional content:

  

  At 10x zoom, using a hybrid of that 3x optical lens and the other lenses in play, the results are decent, but there's definitely some distortion creeping in:

  

  Push it to 30x "Space Zoom" however, and like the 50x "Space Zoom" on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, it all falls apart:

  

  Premium phones should also deliver superior low light capabilities, and this is an area where Samsung's fallen somewhat behind its competition in recent years, with the likes of Apple, Google and most notably Huawei offering up astonishingly good low light photography.

  To test this out, I used the same setting as my telephoto shooting but later at night in near pitch darkness – or as close as you can get to that on the outskirts of Sydney anyway, taking the Galaxy Note 20, Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G, Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max, Google Pixel 4XL and Huawei P30 Pro along for comparative purposes.

  Each shot was taken handheld in that phone's night shooting mode for comparative purposes.

  Apple's iPhone 11 Pro Max really struggled with this scenario, delivering a dark shot filled with noise:

  

  Google's AI-led night mode delivers a lot of artificial sky colour, but loses a lot of tree detail:

  

  This is where the Galaxy Note 20 sits, although you get more of a natural night sky out of its night shot:

  

  The larger sensor on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G allows it to grab a lot more detail than the Note 20:

  

  And Huawei's prowess in low light, whether in regular "Supersensor" mode or specific night mode, leaves it still leading the pack. Given Huawei's lack of Google support and the end of its limited Google support for the P30 Pro hitting, it's not a phone I'd recommend any more, sadly:

  

  

  The Galaxy Note 20 isn't as good a night camera as the Note 20 Ultra, but it shoots better and more cleanly than many of its Samsung predecessors. This is deliberately a brutal test, rather than one looking for specifically pleasing images, and for general low light purposes the Galaxy Note 20 performs well.

  On the video front, the Galaxy Note 20 shoots at up to 8K, although that is still slight overkill for most of us. The Note 20's smaller size relative to the Note 20 Ultra 5G is a bit of a boon here, because it's much easier to hold steady when you're capturing video.

  Samsung Galaxy Note 20 sample photos:

  

  

  

  

  

Performance

Performance

• Exynos 990 with 8GB RAM runs well
• S-Pen actions add a high level of productivity
• Air actions remain too fussy to be really useful

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Note 20's performance

  As it's done for years, Samsung actually produces two distinct variants of the Galaxy Note 20, shipping with either Qualcomm's Snapdragon 865+ processor or its own in-house Exynos 990 silicon underneath the display. Official Australian models of Samsung phones, with the notable exception of the Samsung Galaxy Fold, have tended towards Exynos solutions, and that's exactly what you get here, matched up with 8GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of onboard storage. Again on paper that's a lesser solution than the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, which features the same processor heart but 12GB of RAM on the 5G variants, or 8GB on the 4G LTE models.

  However, when you put the Note 20 to the test, it really doesn't miss a beat, whether that's in benchmark terms or straight-up application usage. Here's how the Galaxy Note 20 compares to a range of premium handsets using Geekbench 5's CPU test:

  Predictably, Apple's A13 Bionic bests anything that Android can throw at it, but presuming you're not an iPhone buyer, the Exynos 990 still shows plenty of promise. It's outclassed by the Find X2 Pro, but that's a phone running the Snapdragon 865+ with 12GB of RAM, and Exynos processors have always tended to trail their Qualcomm counterparts in benchmark terms.

  It's a similar pleasing story using 3DMark's Slingshot Extreme benchmark:

  What's interesting here is how the Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra jostle for place against each other, with the Note 20 sometimes topping the bigger, more expensive handset. Still, benchmarks only give us a simulated feel for the performance of a phone, as distinct from the experience of using it in real life. Here the Note 20 is a highly impressive device.

  The practical reality here is that we've passed the point where flagships are totally outpacing even the mid range of phones when it comes to everyday app performance, so that's no real shock at all. There's some scope of course for the Note 20 Ultra to manage more apps thanks to its more generous 12GB of RAM, but in side-by-side app comparison I never actually saw that in reality.

  

  The Note 20 is an Android 10 phone running with Samsung's own One UI 2.5 on top at launch. I'm more of a fan of clean Android experiences if I've got the choice, but Samsung has come a long way in terms of designing generally pleasing user interfaces that mostly make sense and stay consistent, something that's not always true of the launchers of some of its competitors.

  Samsung hasn't radically reinvented what you can do with the S-Pen on the Galaxy Note 20 this time around, which means you get a mixture of features, some of which are useful and many of which are more in the realm of being gimmicks. Accuracy should be higher than in previous generations with lower pen latency, and the Samsung Note's update has had a software update, meaning that you can now use it to annotate imported PDFs pretty easily. For most S-Pen fans it's a case of very gradual evolution, however, and there's still plenty of less-than-essential feature in play.

  Yes, it's very cute that you can control the display using "Air Actions" without the S-Pen actually touching the surface of the display, but the real world situations where that's truly useful or desirable are few and far between. It's still an excellent note jotting device, and good for simple artwork as well if you're artistically inclined.

  I have the artistic ability of a grumpy toddler, but even I had fun mucking around with the S-Pen's feature set on the Galaxy Note 20.

  

  Image: Alex Kidman Image: Finder

  The Note series has long had its positioning tied into being productivity devices, and in recent years that's meant a focus on Samsung's "DeX" desktop environment via cabled or dock connection. With the Note 20 DeX goes wireless, allowing for miracast-compatible TVs to gain DeX-terity, although you can still opt to use it in a wired configuration if that's your preference. My own TV setup sadly wasn't spotted by wireless DeX so I wasn't able to test it out, although to nobody's surprise most recent models of Samsung TVs are compatible.

Battery life

Battery life

• 4,300mAh battery has fair performance
• Fast wired and wireless charging
• Wireless powershare remains a gimmick

• Read more about the Samsung Galaxy Note 20's battery life

  The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 ships with a 4,300mAh battery, a tad smaller than the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. However, it's got a smaller display to power, and I was curious to see how it would compare, especially as Samsung phones of recent generations have tended to falter in terms of battery life.

  To give a comparative picture of performance, I ran our standard battery test past the Galaxy Note 20. This involves setting screen brightness to maximum, volume to moderate and streaming a 1,080p YouTube video for an hour from 100% battery capacity. Battery usage can naturally vary, but phones that can keep above a 90% battery level are typically good for multi-day battery usage. However, of late, most Samsung phones have fallen short of that mark. Here's how the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 compared:

  The Note 20 matches the larger capacity Note 20 Ultra despite its smaller battery when both are running with 60Hz displays, but does better than the Ultra if it's in its adaptive 120Hz mode. That battery score is fair, and it's possible to get a day's usage out of the Note 20, but like many phones that tip towards the lower end of the 90% mark, if you're a heavier user you'll most likely be reaching for a charger before the day is up.

  Here you've got a choice between up to 25W USB C charging or 15W wireless charging to top it up. My review sample was utterly bare bones and it's not entirely clear if you do get a 25W charger in the box with the Australian Galaxy Note 20 or not, so I couldn't test quite how rapidly it can replenish the Note 20's battery. For what it's worth, Samsung's claim is that it can get more than half its charge back in just 30 minutes of charging.

  The Galaxy Note 20 also supports reverse wireless charging for Qi devices, a feature that Samsung calls "Wireless powershare". It's still something of a gimmick, because it's very slow wireless charging and mostly only useful for smaller devices like Samsung's new Galaxy Buds Live headphones.

Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy Note 20?

I honestly went into the review process for the Galaxy Note 20 expecting it to run a distant second to the Note 20 Ultra. On a pure specifications level, that's the picture you'd assume, but the reality of using the Note 20 rather flipped that expectation on its head. The Note 20 is an easier phone to carry around with essentially identical application performance, arguably better battery performance and, of course a much lower price point to hit your wallet with.

Really, that's the bigger challenge to the Note 20 at this point in time, because there's so many very good mid-range phones out there nipping at its heels.

Pricing and availability

Price

RRP: $1,999.00

Where to buy

Check availability at eBay

Check availability at Amazon

AmazoneBay

The 4G-only variant of the Galaxy Note 20 sells in Australia in Mystic Bronze, Mystic Green or Mystic Grey finishes with 256GB of onboard storage for $1,499 outright, while the 5G model ships with 256GB of onboard storage for $1,649 outright.

Specifications

Images: Alex Kidman