Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Samsung Galaxy Note 9 Review: The Total Package!”.
Hey, what is up guys mkbhd here – and this is the samsung galaxy – note – 9, an absolute unit uh. This is that android phone again. That starts at a thousand bucks this year, which is making headlines again, it’s a very expensive phone. I’Ve been using it since it came out since that impressions, video so for well over a week, and i got ta say i think it’s worth it so last year i was talking about the five pillars of a great smartphone. So if you recall some of my previous reviews, i’ve had about five pillars of a great smartphone, those five and the one that the note 8 didn’t have was great battery.
But literally everything else about it was great and it’s still one phone of the year. This year the note 9 upgrades literally everything about that phone and makes the biggest improvement to the battery. So it’s getting a lot of flack for being just an incremental upgrade to the note 8, but i actually think that’s one of the best. Compliments that you could give a phone right now. So what are those pillars again? You might be asking. They are great display, great, build quality, great performance, great camera and great battery life. I always say: if you check every single box, you got yourself a great quality. Smartphone, if we look at galaxy note 9 now it checks every single box and then some so the display is incredible. Some, including me, would even say it’s literally the best display in any phone last year’s note was already the best display in any phone this year. It’S 0.1 inches bigger and it’s magnificently bright. You can read it outdoors in direct sunlight. It’S super, vibrant and contrasty and color accurate. This is an a plus display great for gaming, for watching videos and also no notch in case you forgot about that. The only downside to a display like this is how big it makes the phone feel i just came from the oneplus 6, as you know, with a smaller display and the pixel before that and using an iphone 10 a lot. So moving up to this note, it’s one of the few phones that really makes me work hard to use it with one hand, and i prefer often to use it with two hands. And i don’t say that about a lot of phones.
So there’s a lot of reaching to get up to the top of the display and then back down to the bottom and you’re going to notice it. But then again, if you’re getting a note, you already know what you’re getting yourself into and sometimes that’s just something. You got to calibrate for, but all in all great display, no question that gets a thumbs up and that kind of leads me into the second part, which is great, build quality with the infinity display, the kind of bleeding of the edge of the screen over samsung. Still does that it’s recognizable versus other phones, that don’t do this and i like it.
They don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. They found something that makes it feel really immersive and they just keep doing that. Well, but really, i think we just keep forgetting like the build quality, the industrial design or just generally, the hardware of this phone is one of the most underrated things about it. It’S really great, you have the premium build materials right, so you got metal all the way around.
This is the new blue one that i actually kind of like a lot tight corners like really boxy as a phone, much more squared off than most, but i like that. They still have the rounded corners of the display, but not by a whole lot and then overall it just has this chiseled dense, look and feel, and it checks a lot of boxes. It’S ip68 water resistant. It has a headphone jack.
It has excellent clicky buttons and i’ll talk more about those in a bit and one of the more underrated upgrades to the hardware is the speakers they’re in the same place as they were, but they’re now much louder and fuller, sounding and just straight up better than Before i definitely appreciate that slight downside to the hardware is the glossy back that will 100 collect tons of fingerprints, as you can see as good as samsung’s glass looks when it’s clean it can get pretty clouded up, but obviously the easy fix you can drop a Dbrand skin on it, i may recommend a black skin specifically for this one, so you can rock a super clean black and yellow. Look with that s pen overall, this thing is built like a tank. Build quality is not a problem on the note 9. i’d even say it technically counts as a little bit of an upgrade because they move the fingerprint reader down just a little bit to be more reachable minor detail, but makes a difference when you’re using it every Day but build quality is great, okay, so performance galaxy.
Note 9 has been a great performer. It’S a fast high-end flagship, so you’d expect that snapdragon 845 and six gigs of ram here, etc. I’M always worried about samsung’s skin, though, because it’s not light. It’S kind of a lot: you worry about software updates with it, but from my use so far it’s been smooth and snappy.
It’S what i’ve come to expect and it’s gotten one software update so far. Now this is the 128 gig version with six gigs of ram. I haven’t yet gotten to try myself the 512 gig version with eight gigs of ram, but the thing about that. First of all, it’s 250 bucks more expensive than the baseline version. So that’s a lot and then i don’t really see myself actually using 500 gigs of storage on a phone as amazing as it is. I love that it’s an option. It’S 2018! Why not push that limit, but almost all the stuff i use as far as media music photos? This stuff is all cloud-based anyway, if you are the type of person to have an insane amount of local media and movies and games whatever it is you’re doing there can only be one phone. That’S offering this half a terabyte of storage.
Right now i mean maybe two or three, but that’s what node is all about giving you these power user features, plus an extra two gigs of ram doesn’t hurt, but i think pretty much. Anyone, including me, will be fine with the 128.6 and then there is also a new cooling system to mention so zack jerry rig everything he tore into his note 9 and showed the much bigger copper heat pipe inside this phone samsung calls it a water carbon cooling System – all i can tell you is just from using it. This phone definitely still gets a little bit warm on the back, especially when gaming for a while or navigating in a warm window of your dashboard or something like that, but definitely never overheated.
It is for sure, a great gaming phone, though it has the specs and more to keep up and the most incredible display and some upgraded speakers. So that’s still a solid combo, and so then there is the camera or cameras and uh. This is a this.
Is a firmly third place camera as far as smartphones go right now, which is pretty awesome, i mean you got pixel 2 at the top, which is amazing. Then you got this and iphone 10 right around. Second and third, you can watch the blind test, video, if you don’t believe me, but this is essentially the exact same camera setup as the galaxy s9 plus from a couple months ago, which makes it an upgrade from the last note.
So just like the s9 plus, you give it a lot of light and it is an excellent camera. You can get real shallow depth of field if you get close enough to your subject as they’re, pretty classic samsung, vibrant colors and slight over processing. As far as sharpening and noise reduction, you’ve already heard this all from me before the one new addition is the ai in the settings which they call a scene optimizer that will automatically adjust certain colors when it recognizes the subject so with flowers it might boost the Warmer colors or with landscapes, it might boost the blue of the sky, but i found this more inconsistent and annoying to me than useful, so i turned it off after a while, but what i do think was useful is what they called flaw: detection or basically, if Someone blinks or the photo’s blurry, or it finds a red eye or something’s messed up in some way.
It’Ll. Let you know right away, so you can take another one that part’s cool but overall yeah, so galaxy note 8 had a great camera, then galaxy s9 and s9 plus had great camera. Now we got note 9 still great camera. So that brings us to what you were all probably wondering about from the beginning, which is the battery the note 9 bumps up to a 4 000 milliamp hour battery, which is a pretty big jump from last year. Last year they were a little conservative. You know sort of following up on the heels of the problems they had, so they had a 3 300 milliamp hour battery in note 8.. So that’s a plus 20 battery capacity size, that’s not iterative. I know a lot of things. We’Ve said about this: phone have been iterative, that’s not. That is a massive jump, but that’s just on paper.
So as far as actual life of the phone goes, it’s not the best battery life of any phone that’ll still go to phones with smaller screens. But note 9 is now comfortably lasting all day with a little extra room to spare, which it didn’t do that before. So i’m getting around 5 hours of screen on time with most of my days, occasionally a little more, never really less, which, with my heavy usage, is pretty damn good, i’m going to say a minus grade battery that i was pretty happy with obviously having a massive 6.4 inch super bright display cranked on all the time is gon na take a toll on a phone, so we felt that last year with the big screen, i think four thousand milliamp hours is actually the appropriate battery size. For the galaxy note – and i don’t think anyone getting it will be disappointed. This is great battery life so looks like they did it.
They they, like, i said, literally, upgraded everything on paper about this phone from last year, which was already good. So i mean you got a better bigger brighter display. It’S great, you got great performance, you got great build quality, you got a great battery life and a great camera.
Now, all in one phone and like the note always does it also has a ton of extras. Just because samsung has tons of features to throw in for people who are into that kind of stuff. Those are people who are buying the note, like all the different screen modes and advanced tinkering.
Samsung throws in the settings for people who want to dial in the exact color balance and look of their displays things like that. It’S not it’s clearly not flawless uh such a perfectly placed bixby button that can’t be remapped. I can’t ignore that. It’S a damn, shame! I just want to remap the bixby button to launch google or twitter or something else i want to do what you can’t samsung. I thought you were about that and the s pen remote feature it works, and it’s great. I i just don’t see myself using it. All that much i don’t do powerpoints from my phone or any presentations or stuff like that, so i still just use the s pen for just taking it out, jotting down a note and putting it away. You know the extra features are welcome and there will be people who love them and use them a lot, but turns out i’m just one of those people who uses stylus the way i always have. But for me, at the end of the day, honestly, i would have no problem using this phone every single day.
It checks so many boxes. You can’t really find another phone that does an incredible high-res oled display no notch ip68 water resistance, a headphone jack and then up to half a terabyte of flash storage, snapdragon 845. Eight gigs of ram expandable storage. On top of that, dual cameras, both with ois and a 4 000 milliamp hour battery, a thousand bucks – is a lot to spend on a phone.
But if you’re gon na spend a thousand bucks on one, this is for sure the one to get you’re getting your money’s worth and people who are looking into buying a note already know what they’re getting themselves into and they’re gon na love this. But if you’re in the other side of that camp, if you’re not a note person, if you’re, if you’re, already typing in the comments, a thousand bucks is way too much to spend on a phone. I would never do that. Then a phone like the galaxy s9 or s9 plus, which are several hundred dollars, less that’s going to be the route for you to go so samsung’s kind of offering the whole wealth of different budget options and you can choose – and i think you’ll find something you Like in there, it’s a good phone good job samsung until the next one. Thanks for watching talk to you guys later peace, you .