Four reasons to buy a Samsung Galaxy Note20, and four reasons not to
You might think the new £849 Galaxy Note20 and £899 Galaxy S20 are two peas in the same pod as ‘affordable’ counterparts to their high-priced Ultra siblings. They’re not.
While the Galaxy S20 is basically a smaller version of the S20 Ultra, with the same chip, RAM, and screen tech as its pricier sibling, the Galaxy Note20 shares very little with the Note20 Ultra.
Samsung has set the cheaper Galaxy Note20 apart from both the Note20 Ultra and the Galaxy S20 Ultra with a number of changes, many of which might make buyers think twice about buying one. Here’s why your £849 might be better spent on the slightly older Galaxy S20 – or not.
1. THE NOTE20’S PROCESSOR IS FASTER THAN THE S20’S…
Samsung has opted to outfit the Galaxy Note20 with the Exynos 990 processor, which brings a 10‑per cent boost in speed and graphics. Whether that translates into a performance boost that you can feel is another story, but anyone who buys a Note20 will have the best chip Samsung ever shipped.
...BUT THE GALAXY NOTE20 HAS LESS RAM
Like the Galaxy S20, the Galaxy Note20 Ultra is loaded with 12GB of speedy LPDDR5 RAM, but that’s not the case for the Galaxy Note20. The ‘cheaper’ Note20 has 8GB of RAM only, so you won’t be able to keep as many apps open at one time or lock any of them to the RAM for instant loading. Granted, 8GB is plenty for a phone – and the Ultra still has 12GB of RAM – but if you’re paying the same price, you’d expect the same RAM. The Note20 (right) is just a little smaller than the Note20 Ultra but it’s missing a lot of features.
2. THE GALAXY NOTE20 HAS A NEW SPEEDY S PEN STYLUS…
The main reason for the existence of the Note line is its on‑board S Pen stylus, and Samsung has made it even better on the Galaxy Note20. Latency has been reduced all the way down to 9ms, so writing will feel as natural as an actual pen, and it has a whole assortment of new tricks, including air gestures, PDF annotation in Notes, and enhanced handwriting recognition.
…BUT YOU CAN’T EXPAND THE GALAXY NOTE20’S STORAGE
The Galaxy Note line is generally synonymous with power users and
productivity, but the Note20 is missing several high-end features, including an expandable memory slot. While all models of the Galaxy S20 can expand their storage up to a terabyte with a microSD card, you’re stuck with 256GB of fixed storage with the Note20.
3. YOU CAN WIRELESSLY CONNECT THE NOTE20 TO AN EXTERNAL SCREEN…
DeX has been one of the more underrated features of Samsung’s premium Galaxy phones, letting you turn your phone into a mini PC with mouse and keyboard support, and bona fide desktop experience. What started as a full dock turned into a charging pad, then a cable, and now you don’t need any extra equipment at all. If you have a TV or monitor with Miracast support you can beam your Galaxy Note20 to it with just a tap.
…BUT THE NOTE20’S SCREEN IS SLOWER THAN THE S20’S
The Galaxy S20 was Samsung’s first 120Hz phone, and we naturally assumed it would also come to the Galaxy Note20. We were wrong. While the higher-priced Note20 Ultra has a fast 120Hz screen, the cheaper Note20 has the old 60Hz one. And while it’s a good deal larger than the S20 (6.7 inches versus 6.2 inches), it also has a lower resolution.
4. THE GALAXY NOTE20 HAS A BIG BATTERY…
The Galaxy Note20 has a 6.7in display and 5G on board, so it’s going to need a big battery to make it through the day. Samsung has fitted the Note20 with a 4,300mAh battery, about 10 per cent bigger than the 4,000mAh
battery inside the Galaxy S20. That might not seem like much, but with fewer pixels and a 60Hz screen, the Galaxy Note20 could be one of Samsung’s longest-lasting flagships in years.
…BUT THE EXACT SAME CAMERA AS THE GALAXY S20
While Samsung has added laser autofocus and refined the Space Zoom system on the Galaxy Note20 Ultra, the camera on the Galaxy Note20 is identical to the one on the S20 released in March: Camera 1: 12Mp ultra‑wide (120 degrees), f/2.2 Camera 2: 12Mp wide, f/1.8, OIS Camera 3: 64Mp telephoto, f/2.0
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The Galaxy S20 has one of the best cameras this side of the iPhone 11 Pro, so the Galaxy Note20 will take fantastic photos with very little effort. Still, it would have been nice to get a new feature or two.